THE  LEGEND  OF 
JERRY  LADD 

ROY  ROLFE  GIL  SON 


THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 


THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 
BY  ROY  ROLFE  GILSON 


Author  of  "Ember  Light,"  "The  Wistful  Years"  "Katrina,' 
"In  the  Morning  Glow,"  etc. 


GARDEN  CITY        NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

1913 


Copyright,  1913,  by 

DOUBLEDAY,    PAGE    &   COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  JERRY 


2229450 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  "THIS   DREAMER   COMETH"     .  3 

II.  A   STRANGER  IN   OUR  MIDST  .  28 

m.  A  PRACTICAL  MAN      ....  48 

IV.  BARBARA 73 

V.  THE   NOW       .......  98 

VI.  LARK  FLIGHTS 119 

VII.  CLOUD   SHADOWS 137 

VHI.  IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING.  155 

IX.  WAYFARERS   .      .      .     ...      .  175 

X.  ANGELS      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .195 

XI.  WHERE   GARDENS   MEET       .      .  218 

XII.  THE  VALE   OF   SILENCE  .  230 


THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH 

1WAS  always  fond  of  him,"  said  one,  "as  you  all 
know.     But  he  was  a  fool." 
"Or  a  genius,"  said  another.    "You  never  can 
tell." 

"A  child  rather,  I  should  say,"  observed  a  third. 
"  He  never  grew  up." 

"But  something  of  a  poet  too,  don't  you  think?" 
ventured  a  woman's  voice.  "Though  not  in  verse,  or 
prose  either,  for  that  matter.  In  life,  I  mean." 

"Well,  yes,"  one  of  them  conceded,  in  a  juster  tone 
than  he  had  used  before.  "Jerry  was  what  you  might 
call  a  rhapsodist.  Certainly  an  unpractical  man.  An 
idealist,  a  dreamer,  always." 

"Illusionist  is  the  better  word,"  another  voice  sug- 
gested. 

"That  is  to  say,"  interposed  the  one  who  had  used 
a  harsher  name,  "he  was  a  visionary." 

"Oh,  yes.     He  was  always  seeing  visions,  Jerry  was," 
3 


4       THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

murmured  another  who  had  not  yet  spoken.  "He 
was  not  of  this  world.  He  was  always  a  stranger  here. 
Let  us  hope  that  he  is  more  at  home  where  he  is  now." 

And  all  were  silent.  It  was  that  silence  of  remem- 
brance, more  eloquent,  more  final  than  any  speech  — 
each  one  waiting  in  the  consciousness  that,  after  all, 
a  visionary's  life  could  only  be  summed  up  in  reverie. 
And  yet,  somehow,  the  woman  did  find  words  for  it, 
saying  them  softly  like  a  sigh  — 

"Poor  St.  Jerry!" 

And  all  the  rest,  surprised  in  their  own  compassion, 
and  astonished  that  it  should  be  so  simply  and  yet  so 
perfectly  revealed  in  words,  and  in  the  very  spirit 
of  the  one  thus  canonized  forever  in  the  calendar  of 
their  remembrance,  looked  up  and  smiled. 

Such  were  the  doubtful  verdicts  of  the  world  when 
he  was  gone.  Often,  since,  I  have  been  haunted  by 
his  story.  It  is  a  tale  more  common  than  I  used  to 
think.  I  have  known  few  like  him,  but  I  have  met 
often,  in  the  thoroughfares  of  life,  strange  faces  in 
whose  lights  and  shadows  I  have  seen  his  own  again. 
And,  for  his  sake,  I  have  always  felt  for  them  a  certain 
friendliness  of  pity  —  a  wistful,  helpless,  hopeless  kind 
of  pity,  for  however  I  may  think,  or  write,  about  him 
— just  as  however  I  tried  to  hold  him,  as  it  were, 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  5 

when  he  was  here  —  he  always  eludes  my  imagination 
as  he  did  my  hand.  His  coat-tails  always  seemed 
slipping  from  my  grasp.  And  even  now  I  scarce  know 
how  to  keep  his  memory  fast  long  enough  to  be  quite 
sure  that  it  is  fairly  and  truly  here. 

Of  those  doubtful  verdicts,  each  one,  perhaps,  was 
partly  right.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  very  likely 
that  none  of  us  did  Jerry  justice.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
say.  All  I  can  be  sure  of  is  that  he  seldom  saw  with 
our  eyes  at  all,  nor  we  with  his.  Sometimes,  touched 
to  a  kind  of  tenderness  that  one  does  not  easily  confess, 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  was  he  who  had  the  truer 
vision;  that  he  saw  more  deeply  than  the  rest  of  us. 
But  he  was  so  unpractical,  and  he  was  such  an  ungov- 
ernable enthusiast  for  those  lovely  desirable  things  that 
we  all  dream  of  when  we  are  young,  but  fail,  somehow, 
to  realize  in  our  maturity.  And  he  would  not  com- 
promise with  life.  Could  not,  it  may  be.  That  was 
the  exasperating  thing  about  him.  That  was  what 
made  one's  fingers  ache,  sometimes,  to  shake  him  into 
what  the  world  calls  common  sense. 

And  yet  .  .  .  one  is  ashamed  to  quarrel  with 
those  angelic  visions.  I  remember  his  saying  once, 
when  some  one  spoke  of  the  lack  of  common  sense  in 
another  imaginative  friend  of  ours: 


6   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Perhaps  he  has  wwcommon  sense." 

Perhaps  Jerry  had. 

Poor  St.  Jerry!  For  one  always  comes  back  to 
that  extravagant,  half-sad,  half-humorous,  but  alto- 
gether final  phrase.  And  he  was  faithful,  unto  death, 
to  those  beauties  that  were  so  dim  to  us,  but  so  bright 
and  real  to  him  that  he  saw  them,  his  wife  once  told 
us,  "even  on  weekdays."  And  she  said  it  with  a  proud, 
defiant,  little  smile  that  reminded  one  of  us  at  least 
that  he  always  had  bis  visions  of  a  Sunday. 

She  herself  was  a  heroine  —  Barbara  Ladd.  For  it 
is  all  very  well  to  go  flying  about  on  wings  that  nobody 
else  can  see,  if  only  you  can  feel  them  for  yourself,  buoy- 
ing you  up  over  threatening  seas.  But  to  be  bound 
helpless,  as  a  wife,  to  such  an  air-man  —  to  go  sailing 
on  into  the  clouds,  while  he  assures  you  that  you  are 
really  safe  with  him,  upborne  by  angels  whose  light, 
perhaps,  is  in  his  eyes,  but  whose  hands  would  be  a 
deal  more  sure  and  comforting  if  only  you  could  feel 
them  clutching  your  skirts  and  holding  you  fast  from 
those  terrible  realities  beneath  —  that,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  the  daftest,  most  breathless  heroism  in  the  world. 
And  Barbara  had  it. 

But,  I  am  told,  I  forget  that  Barbara  herself  had 
wings  to  fly  with  —  wings  all  her  own,  of  love.  True. 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  7 

And  that  love  could  flame  as  well  as  fly,  as  one  of  us 
has  reason  to  recall.  I  mean,  of  course,  the  devil's 
advocate.  He  shall  be  nameless,  though  I  have  quoted 
him.  He  was  not  myself.  He  was  that  other  —  friend, 
who  said  that  Jerry  was  a  fool;  and  who  had  the 
temerity  to  write  to  Barbara,  even  in  her  grief,  words 
that  she  never  could  forgive,  much  less  forget. 

"After  all,"  he  told  her,  "deeply  sympathizing  as  I 
do  with  you  in  your  great  sorrow,  one  cannot  —  I 
assume  that  even  you  cannot  in  your  heart  of  hearts  — 
be  really  sorry  that  he  has  been  saved  the  inevitable 
pain  of  a  world  for  which  he  was  always  so  unfitted. 
Had  he  lived,  no  one  can  say  what  bitter  sorrow  and 
disillusionment  he  might  have  come  to." 

"What  right,"  cried  Barbara,  with  trembling  lips 
and  swimming  eyes,  "what  right  has  he,  or  any  other 
man,  to  write  like  that?  Smug  little  worldling!  As  if 
Jerry  was  all  wrong!  And  he,  of  course,  all  right!  To 
be  so  sure,  in  his  conceit,  that  failure  was  inevitable 
for  —  for  a  man  a  million  times  more  .  .  .  and  to 
talk  about  my  'heart  of  hearts'!  What  does  he  know 
about  a  woman's  heart  of  hearts,  who  hasn't  any  of  his 
own?" 

Grief,  of  course,  can  hardly  be  expected  to  be  philo- 
sophical; and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  devil's  advocate 


8   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

must  say  hard  things  —  which  may  be  true.  But,  after 
all,  in  spite  of  them,  Jeremy,  with  all  his  frailties,  was 
beatified  and  canonized  for  those  outnumbering  virtues 
that  shone  so  wonderfully  through  Barbara's  tears. 

"A  man  like  Jeremy,"  I  am  told  on  the  very  best 
authority,  "arouses  the  mother  in  the  wife." 

Certainly  Barbara  mothered  him.  What  would  have 
happened  if  she  had  had  no  brooding  pity  to  arouse, 
no  steadfast  sense  of  homely  duty,  no  meek  and  simple 
faith  in  a  Providence  that  watches  over  little  children, 
even  grown  ones,  in  their  dreams,  it  might  have  puzzled 
the  devil's  advocate  himself  to  say.  And  he  was  quite 
familiar  with  such  contingencies. 

She  had  two  children,  Barbara  had.    The  elder  was 

St.  Jerry. 

ii 

I  knew  him  first,  quite  fittingly,  as  a  man  of  words. 
He  was  Our  Correspondent  in  a  place  called  Toodlums. 
The  postoffice  was  Veteran;  old  residents  of  the  little 
town  still  spoke  of  it  sometimes  as  Unionville,  after  a 
former  fashion;  but  "folks  generally"  called  it  Tood- 
lums —  a  term  of  endearment  whose  derivation  I  have 
forgotten,  if  I  ever  knew.  It  was  the  merest  trifle  of 
a  village,  but  of  a  remarkable  productiveness,  out  of 
all  proportion  to  its  geographical  significance,  in  the 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  9 

way  of  literary  fires,  elopements,  weddings,  accidents, 
and  lawsuits,  with  an  occasional  crime.  That  is  to 
say,  the  news  that  came  to  us  from  Toodlums  always 
had  a  certain  Cranford  flavour,  as  if  that  charming 
old  English  village  might  have  somehow  emigrated  to 
America  —  dames,  spinsters,  bachelors,  Jerry  Ladd,  and 
all. 

As  the  junior  editor  of  the  Gazette  —  published  at 
the  county  seat  some  miles  from  Toodlums  —  it  fell 
to  my  apprentice  hand  to  arrange,  weekly,  a  dreary 
mass  of  county  items  that  came  in  by  mail.  They 
were  written  on  odd  sheets  of  paper,  in  outlandish 
hands,  ludicrously  misspelled,  and  terribly  befuddled 
as  to  tenses;  and  one  had  to  keep  a  vigilant  and  clair- 
voyant eye,  which  all  editors  are  expected  to  possess, 
upon  the  dull  monotony  of  personal  allusions,  lest 
rustic  wit  and  malice  should  creep  in  unawares,  and  the 
Gazette  should  suffer  in  a  suit  for  libel.  It  was  a  thank- 
less task,  and  a  mournful;  for,  in  the  main,  country 
life  appeared  to  be  a  sad  succession  of  influenzas, 
sociables,  new  barns,  and  babies,  and  —  regularly,  once 
a  week  —  Another  Old  Resident  Gone. 

Toodlums,  however,  was  an  exception  to  the  rule. 
It  was  a  poor  week  when  I  did  not  smile  gratefully  at 
the  appearance  of  Jeremy  Ladd.  He  came  in  a  yellow 


io     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

envelope  bearing  in  one  comer  the  name  of  some  brick 
concern  by  which,  I  fancied,  he  was  employed.  And 
he  brought  with  him  not  merely  the  homely  gossip  of 
the  country  store,  but  something  of  the  woods  and 
fields  as  well  —  little  sunlit  touches  that  made  his  Tood- 
lums  an  idyllic  background  for  his  humble  chronicles, 
so  that  I  imagined  it  must  be  different  from  our  other 
country  scenes,  and  even  thought  of  seeing  it  some 
day  myself.  Sentimental  beyond  a  doubt,  and  a  little 
immature  —  high-schoolish  is  perhaps  the  word,  if  it 
is  a  word  —  Jeremy's  writings,  from  my  own  young 
point  of  view,  were  beyond  reproach,  and  they  were 
highly  literary  for  the  Gazette.  If  it  had  Inot  been  for 
the  brick  concern,  one  might  have  guessed  him  the 
village  schoolmaster,  earning  funds  for  a  university 
career.  But  he  was  hardly  text-bookish  enough  for 
that.  He  was  too  imaginative.  If  there  was  a  Cran- 
ford  in  his  Toodlums,  there  was  a  something  more 
subtly,  more  elusively  English  in  himself.  Yet  not 
English  in  any  modern  sense.  Not  at  all  British. 
English  in  a  sense  more  ancient  even  than  Cranford 
days.  It  was  Elizabethan,  though  I  did  not  under- 
stand it  to  be  so  then.  And  how  it  was  Elizabethan  is 
better  left  for  a  more  timely  page.  Then,  when  I  was 
editing  his  classic  items,  I  only  knew  that  they  had  in 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  n 

them  an  alien  atmosphere  of  hawthorn-scented  lanes. 
And  I  am  afraid  I  expected  to  find  hawthorn-hedges 
when  I  went  to  Toodlums. 

One  thing  I  did  expect,  and  found.  There  was  a 
little  river  there,  very  Englishy,  which  had  a  way  of 
meandering  through  his  correspondence,  placidly  in  and 
out  of  its  hay-fields  and  its  mild  adventures,  but  with 
treacherously  rushy  places,  and  lilied  havens,  where 
Toodlums  youngsters  had  a  way  sometimes  of  getting 
drowned.  On  such  occasions  I  am  sure  that  it  was  a 
cross  to  Jeremy  that  he  had  to  mention  the  village 
"cemetery"  when  his  pen  so  naturally  would  have 
written  "churchyard."  And  it  is  sad  to  think  how 
always  he  must  have  nibbled  at  his  pen  trying  to  con- 
trive some  way  of  using  all  the  lovely  old  English  words 
that,  with  their  tender  meanings,  we  left  behind 
us  when  we  came  away.  Once,  I  know,  the  Gazette 
received  a  protest  from  the  Methodist  minister  at 
Toodlums  complaining  that  Our  Correspondent  showed 
a  strange  partiality  for  the  services  at  the  little  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  mission  chapel  which  had  lately 
been  erected  there.  Strange!  It  was  not  strange  at 
all.  Not  that  Jerry  was  a  churchman.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  preferred  to  listen  to  the  Sabbath  bells  from 
the  safe  seclusion  of  the  river  meadows.  But  the 


12     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

mission  had  extended  his  vocabulary,  or,  rather,  it 
had  set  free  from  that  secret  and  imprisoned  music 
of  his  thoughts  certain  exquisite  old  words  that  he 
could  write  at  last  —  matins  and  evensong,  Advent, 
Whitsuntide,  and  a  dozen  others  that  blossomed  there- 
after in  the  Gazette,  like  English  primroses  among  the 
more  familiar  flowers  of  our  native  speech. 

I  have  forgotten  much,  but  when  the  brickyard 
burned  —  it  did  so  twice  during  my  incumbency  — 
Our  Correspondent  was  on  the  spot,  and  I  remember 
how  the  "river's  musing  face  was  flushed  with  firelight." 
Brickyards,  it  should  be  remembered,  burn  best  in  the 
middle  of  the  night.  And  "all  the  countryside"  rose 
from  bed  to  "watch  the  glamour  in  the  sky."  Now 
editors  are  far  more  grateful  than  other  people  think; 
and  it  was  pleasant  —  seated  in  a  stuffy  office  two  days 
afterward  —  to  open  that  yellow  envelope  and  see  in 
a  flash  "the  illumined  landscape,"  and  feel  "the  cool 
air  of  the  country  night"  (I  think  it  was)  upon  one's 
cheek,  while  one  listened  to  "the  crashing  of  the  sheds." 
Nothing  to  delete.  No  mention  whatever  of  "the  de- 
vouring element"  that  wrought  such  havoc  in  our  other 
country  towns.  Nor  do  I  remember  even  "ruddy  flames." 
Simply  the  firelight  and  the  glamour  in  the  sky! 

Probably  he  forgot  to  mention  the  insurance  —  if 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  13 

indeed  such  inflammable  risks  as  brickyards  ever  have 
any.  And,  at  any  rate,  insurance  would  have  been  a 
modern  touch  —  a  veritable  anachronism  in  Jerry  Ladd. 
And  when  did  he  ever  remember  money  in  connection 
with  a  vision  ? 

Then  there  was  the  human  side.  Life  in  Toodlums, 
according  to  Jeremy,  had  the  homely  glow  that  country 
faces  have  —  or  used  to  have,  in  old  English  ballads  — 
when  they  stop  to  grin  with  you  in  the  middle  of  the 
road.  There  was  Uncle  Nat  Jones.  Uncle  Nat  was 
not  "confined  to  the  house."  He  was  not  "suffering 
with  a  cold."  Nor  with  "an  attack  of  grip."  There 
was,  in  fact,  no  mention  of  his  head  whatever.  But 
Jerry  interviewed  him,  I  remember  —  it  was  some 
question  of  Toodlums  politics,  perhaps  —  and  reported 
faithfully  what  Uncle  Nat  had  said.  Just  that  and 
nothing  more  —  word  for  word,  snuffle  for  snuffle! 
One  scarce  could  read  it  without  a  handkerchief. 

Now  that,  to  my  young  journalistic  mind,  was  Art. 
Pure  Art.  And  I  wrote  Ladd  so.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  our  correspondence. 

in 

Through  it  —  through  those  private  confidences  — 
the  little  English  river  flowed  more  beautifully,  more 


i4     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

intimately,  and  with  a  gentler,  more  retrospective, 
Elizabethan  air  than  ever  had  been  possible  in  print. 

"You  ought  to  be  a  ferryman,"  I  wrote. 

"I  am,"  he  answered.  "I  ferry  dreams  across  to 
the  other  side,  where  they  vanish  behind  the  willows, 
leaving  me  to  row  myself  back  alone  to  the  brickyard. 
You  see  my  office  window  overlooks  the  stream  and  I 
have  long  idle  moments  to  myself  between  the  weigh- 
bills." 

"I  begin  to  have  suspicions,"  I  replied  next  week, 
"that  you  are  only  a  poet,  after  all." 

A  fortnight  passed. 

"A  poet!"  I  said  again.  "You  have  all  the  ear- 
marks." 

"P.S."  was  his  reply  —  for  I  have  the  old  letters 
before  me,  both  his  and  mine,  upon  my  desk.  "Now 
about  that  poet-business:  Your  communication  has 
been  duly  filed,  and  will  be  taken  up  at  the  earliest 
possible  opportunity.  The  fact  is,  I'm  waiting  to  hear 
from  Life." 

"P.S.S.  I've  heard.  The  mail's  just  in  and  the 
rumour  that  you  mentioned  is  without  foundation." 

"Send  them  the  Snuffles,"  I  suggested.  "Uncle  Nat 
Jones." 

"I  did." 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  15 

"Don't  be  disheartened,"  I  entreated. 

"I'm  not.  You  see,"  he  explained  —  and  the  ex- 
planation throws  light  upon  his  life  —  "I'm  never 
permanently  disheartened.  I  get  blue.  You  mightn't 
think  so,  but  Toodlums  at  times  is  indigo.  Then  I 
smoke  my  brier,  and  look  at  the  river,  and  think  what 
my  Uncle  Charles  Lamb  would  have  said,  if  he'd  cared 
for  rivers  (it  was  the  town  be  loved),  and,  little  by  little, 
the  blue  turns  to  softest  purple,  and  the  purple  to  a 
fine  kind  of  blooming  rose." 

"What  would  your  Uncle  Charles  Lamb  have  said," 
I  inquired  the  next  Sunday,  "if  he'd  cared  for  rivers  ?  " 

And  on  Tuesday 

"  I  really  don't  know,"  was  his  reply.  "  But  some- 
thing elderly.  Something  calculated  to  make  a  little 
old  young  man  in  a  brickyard  content  to  be  there, 
with  his  unpublished  whimseys  locked  up  tight  in  the 
office  drawer." 

And  then  he  added  what  reads  now  like  the  best 
text  that  I  can  think  of,  for  a  sermon  on  Jerry's  life; 
and  it  would,  of  course,  be  variously  expounded : 

"Lamb,  you  know,  always  makes  mere  reverie  seem  a 
legitimate  vocation." 

\  shall  not  preach  from  this  any  more  than  may  be 
inevitable  in  recalling  a  life  that  was  mostly  reverie 


16      THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

from  first  to  last.  Whether  or  not  it  is  ever  a  "  legiti- 
mate vocation" — whether  there  is  any  room  left  for 
the  contemplative  man  who  is  merely  contemplative 
and  nothing  more,  in  a  world  where  most  men  are 
merely  active  and  nothing  more  —  I  am  not,  in  these 
robust  times,  prepared  to  say.  It  is  as  much  as  one's 
life  is  worth  to  waste  a  moment  in  meditation.  Cer- 
tainly the  roads  are  no  longer  safe,  and  even  the  little 
absent-minded  lanes,  where  the  cow-bells  used  to  tinkle 
and  the  wild  bees  hummed,  are  perilous  with  hoarse- 
voiced  dragons  breathing  smoke  and  fire.  Nature  her- 
self has  been  roused  from  reverie.  How  or  where  shall 
man  dream  quietly  any  more,  when,  at  any  turn,  even 
among  the  brier-roses,  he  must  look  sharp,  hurry  up, 
move  lively  ? 

And  it  is  considered  heresy  to  preach  anything  but 
dynamics  now.  To  do  so  fittingly  one  must  raise  the 
roof,  or  make  the  everlasting  hills  resound;  so  that  to 
lift  a  quiet  voice  —  in  which  alone  one  may  plead 
becomingly  for  the  static  life  —  is  to  waste  one's 
breath. 

Moreover,  as  the  contemplative  man  will  learn  in 
sorrow,  it  is  a  question  also  of  finance.  Reverie,  per- 
haps, is  only  moral  when  it  has  a  bank  account. 

At  any  rate,  so  far  as  Jerry  was  concerned,  his  mani- 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  17 

fest  vocation  —  the  only  one  that  he  ever  had  seemed 
fitted  for,  or  that  he  ever  pursued  to  any  purpose  —  is 
a  thing  that  one  would  wish  to  think  about,  and  write 
about,  before  one  came  to  a  conclusion,  My  own 
comment  at  this  time,  I  find,  related  solely  to  his  com- 
ment on  his  uncle's  writings. 

"Good  heavens!"  I  retorted.  "What  right  has  a 
literary  critic  to  live  in  Toodlums?" 

"It's  the  only  way  to  live  in  Toodlums,"  was  his 
reply.  "Books  are  the  only  things  that  make  life 
bearable.  You  have  no  idea  what  a  hole  this 
is." 

"Hole?"  I  cried.  "Toodlums  a  hole?  Why,  I 
thought  it  was  an  Eden  where  they  made  bricks.  Or 
at  least  a  bit  of  dear  old  England.  What  about  the 
river?" 

"Oh,  damn  the  river!"  he  fairly  shouted  through  the 
mail.  "  I've  tired  of  the  river.  I'm  looking  at  it  now. 
I'm  always  looking  at  it.  It's  a  mere  ditch  of  a  river 
—  slow  as  time,  and  quiet  as  the  dead.  I'm  tired,  I 
tell  you,  of  this  living  in  the  past.  I  want  the  seal 
The  stir  and  roar  of  things  that  have  a  future  in  them. 
You  know  what  I  mean:  the  sea  of  life  —  dreadful,  but 
deep,  and  endless.  I  should  drown,  probably;  but  at 
least  I  should  have  had  to  fight  a  little  first,  striving 


i8     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

to  save  myself.  And  that  would  be  better  than  all 
this  shallow  meandering  in  a  meadow  dream." 

But  even  that  —  all  that  fine  bravado  —  was  but 
a  dream.  Jerry  himself  suspected  it,  it  seems,  for  in 
his  next  letter  he  confesses: 

"Something  tells  me  that  I  am  unfitted  for  this 
world.  It  is  a  matter  of  eyesight,  apparently.  I  don't 
seem  to  see  what  other  folks  are  seeing;  nor  do  they 
see  what  1  see.  And  so,  after  all,  perhaps  the  little 
quiet  places  are  the  safest  .  .  .  only  in  being  quiet,  I 
should  like  not  to  be  mute.  I  should  like  to  say  some- 
thing. I  should  like  to  sing,  not  merely  be  mured  up 
in  this  little  cage  of  a  country  town,  whose  bars  just 
now  are  gilded  by  the  setting  sun.  It  is  odd,  but  — 
living  so  much  in  the  past,  I  suppose  —  I  have  always 
imagined  myself  old.  Really  seen  myself,  always,  as 
an  old  man.  But  old  in  a  young  fashion  —  like  a 
russet  apple.  Rusty,  ripe,  and  mellow.  That's  why 
I  took  to  Lamb,  I  suppose  .  .  .  and  while  you,  with 
your  ambitions,  are  rising  into  fame,  one  of  these  days 
I  and  the  little  old  river  will  be  meandering  down  the 
valley  together,  quarrelling  now  and  then,  and  falling 
out,  but,  at  the  next  bridge,  making  up  again." 

"You  have  the  true  russet  flavour,"  I  acknowledged. 
"But  look  out!  You  are  growing  old  in  the  wrong 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  19 

direction.  You  have  turned  time  around.  Now  you 
are  in  the  Elizabethan  age,  but  if  you  keep  on  living 
backward,  you'll  die  a  contemporary  of  the  Canter- 
bury pilgrims.  Better  come  away  from  Toodlums  — 
your  Toodlums,  the  old  English  poetry  town  —  before 
it  is  too  late.  Come  down  into  modern  times.  There 
is  a  very  pretty  route  (for  quiet,  old-fashioned  people 
like  yourself),  by  way  of  Milton,  Pope,  Burns,  Words- 
worth, and  Alfred  Tennyson  —  with  side  excursions. 
But  the  shorter  way  (and  you  might  as  well  do  this 
business  up  at  once,  and  get  it  over)  is  to  change  your 
knee-breeches  for  peg-tops,  kiss  all  your  milkmaids 
good-bye  under  the  hawthorn  tree,  and  take  the  choo- 
choo  cars  for  this  glorious  present,  which  you  seem  to 
have  utterly  forgot.  In  other  words,  Come  and  see 
me." 

"No,  you  come  here,"  was  his  reply.  "Mother  will 
make  you  any  kind  of  pie  you  like,  and  I'll  take  a 
holiday  and  show  you  Toodlums.  My  Toodlums! 
It's  really  very  pretty.  At  least  I  think  it's  pretty. 
Perhaps  you'll  have  to  squint  at  it  a  little  the  way  the 
artists  do.  Or  do  a  little  reading  first,  the  way  I 
did,  in  good  old  English  verse,  before  I  really  saw  its 
loveliness.  But  come.  Come  Saturday  and  spend  a 
Sunday  with  us,  and  we'll  go  a-rivering." 


20     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

And  then  he  added  these  singular  but  prophetic 
words.  Odd-sounding  at  the  time  —  quaintly,  but 
rather  foolishly  self-conscious,  I  thought  them  then  — 
they  come  back  now  like  an  echo  of  his  life: 

"  You  speak  of  friendship,  but  I  warn  you  in  advance 
that  nobody  ever  knows  me  who  is  not  kind  to  me, 
but  always,  after  a  while,  with  a  little  mixture  of  in- 
dulgence—  as  if  they  liked  me,  somehow,  but  could 
never  find  a  good,  sure  reason  for  it,  and  so  were  doubt- 
ful that  my  claim  upon  them  was  quite  so  valid  as  it 
seemed." 

IV 

I  went  to  Toodlums. 

It  was,  as  Jerry  had  foreseen,  a  matter  of  eyesight; 
and  I  failed  perhaps  to  squint  the  way  the  artists  do, 
or  I  had  read  too  little,  or  too  much,  to  find  the  Tood- 
lums of  his  dream,  or  mine.  Candour  compels  me  to 
confess  the  disappointment.  It  was  not,  so  far  as  I 
could  see,  different  from  our  other  little  country  villages. 
It  was  not  picturesque  —  to  me.  It  was  not  long- 
built  enough  for  that;  nor  were  its  sharp  angles  as 
yet  sufficiently  relieved  by  that  shadowy  grace  of  foliage 
which  is  the  secret  of  most  lovely  little  towns.  Even 
the  river  when  I  first  saw  it  seemed  commonplace 
enough,  though  amiably  complacent  under  my  eager 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH          21 

gaze,  as  I  was  driven  over  it  into  the  village  street 
where  Jerry  awaited  me  before  the  postoffice. 

We  met,  as  young  men  meet,  with  a  hearty  shyness, 
and  with  a  strained  and  rather  incoherent  effort  to 
disclose  ourselves  —  all  our  fine  points  —  completely; 
and  so,  at  first,  talked  fast,  and  both  at  once,  in  little 
futile  outbursts  of  irrelevancy,  laughing  a  great  deal 
to  cover  our  embarrassment,  until  the  strangeness  wore 
away.  Elia,  for  example,  was  mentioned,  as  it  were, 
in  the  first  paragraph,  in  the  same  breath  with  which 
Jeremy  told  me  he  was  glad  I'd  come;  and  while 
he  deplored  the  fact  that  the  weather  was  too  dull  to 
exhibit  Toodlums  at  its  best,  I  was  apologizing  for 
the  razor-cut  that  impaired  my  own  pretensions,  which 
could  ill  afford  so  serious  a  defacement.  Soon,  however, 
all  awkwardness  was  gone.  It  had  vanished  like  a 
mist  under  those  blessed  rays  of  our  youthful  joy  in 
one  another,  and  then,  but  not  till  then,  did  my  scat- 
tered senses  begin  to  assemble  their  impressions  of 
this  long-anticipated  friend. 

He  was  always  difficult  to  describe,  because,  as  I 
can  only  say  it,  the  spirit  and  the  letter  of  him  so  oddly 
disagreed.  One  hesitates  to  call  him  homely,  because 
his  homely  features  always  became  so  vague,  and  so 
inconsequential,  even  so  handsome  sometimes,  illu- 


22     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

mined  by  that  inner  light.  And  after  the  first  single 
glance  of  inquiry  and  its  inevitable  disappointment,  it 
was  the  light  one  saw  rather  than  the  lamp  in  which 
it  shone.  I  cannot  even  be  positive  as  to  his  nose,  or 
the  colour  of  his  eyes,  though  I  think  the  latter  were 
a  kind  of  gray;  and  his  nose,  as  one  might  say,  was 
neither  here  nor  there:  really  didn't  matter.  His 
mouth  was  —  large  enough;  more  I  cannot  pretend  to 
say.  His  hair  was  dark,  and  his  skin  was  what  his  poet 
would  have  called  nut-brown.  It  had  been  caught, 
I  suppose,  in  his  Elizabethan  hay-fields. 

In  short,  of  any  sign,  outward  and  visible,  of  that 
inward  grace  which  had  drawn  me  to  him  all  those 
miles,  I  did  not  instantly  make  out  one  that  was  com- 
pletely satisfying,  or  undeniable,  though  gradually,  as 
our  hearts  found  voices,  my  eyes  caught  gleams  as  of 
a  light  that  I  had  always  known,  and  my  ear  heard 
faint,  far  harmonies  that  seemed  the  echoes  of  familiar 
song.  Attuned  we  were  indeed,  by  youth.  But  there 
was  something  more.  Perhaps  it  was  the  kind  of  youth 
we  shared,  and  yet  —  there  was  something  subtler 
still  that  drew  me  to  him.  Just  what  I  never  could 
define,  and  it  eludes  me  now;  but  it  held  me  always, 
even  in  those  later  years  when  I  grew  impatient  with 
the  vagaries  that  I  could  not  follow.  And  it  haunts 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  23 

me  still,  just  now  as  a  strange  restraint  upon  my 
pen. 

Hovering  about  the  memory  of  that  Sunday  which 
I  spent  with  him  are  certain  smiles,  gently,  almost 
timidly,  benign,  that  were  his  mother's;  and  a  conscious- 
ness of  her  ministrations,  hardly  more  definite  than 
firelight,  but  equally  warming  and  comforting  to  our 
needs.  Even  with  her  bread  before  me,  I  scarcely 
gave  a  lingering  thought  to  all  that  self-effacing  kind- 
ness. Or  was  it  so  self-effacing  as  I  thought?  Rather, 
I  blush  to  think,  it  was  something  else  —  we  were  so 
lost,  Jeremy  and  I,  in  the  preposterous  selfishness  of 
youth  which,  like  a  prince,  takes  all  his  regal  world 
for  granted,  undreaming  at  what  price  of  labour  or  of 
pain  his  ease  and  happiness  are  served.  Not  till  that 
kingdom  vanishes,  and  he  becomes  in  time  a  page  and 
serving-man  himself,  perhaps,  to  the  usurpers  of  his 
former  majesty,  does  he  realize  what  I  do  now;  what 
anxious  care  a  hopeless  invalid  bestowed  that  day  upon 
a  royal  visitor  to  her  royal  son. 

All  day  we  wandered  by  the  river.  Certain  moments 
—  their  scene  and  setting,  and  their  background  of 
those  farther,  fairer  vistas  of  the  mind  —  opened,  it 
might  be,  suddenly,  by  the  magic  of  a  word,  and  lighted 
for  an  instant  by  the  flashing  answer  of  a  smile  —  still 


24     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

glow  for  me  out  of  those  hours  that  are  now  as  shadowy 
as  a  dream.  Certain  tall  cardinal  flowers  still  flame 
for  me,  just  as  we  came  upon  them  in  one  of  the  lonelier 
reaches  of  the  quiet  waters.  What  we  were  talking 
of,  I  do  not  know;  nor  why  they  have  remained  so 
vivid  through  the  intervening  mist  of  years.  I  am 
almost  certain  that  we  did  not  speak  of  them;  but  we 
both  stopped  suddenly  in  our  walk,  with  our  eyes  upon 
them.  And  somewhere  by  a  bridge  a  bird  flew  up  from 
our  very  feet,  and  vanished  —  like  the  reason  for  its 
long  remembrance. 

Foolish  memories!  to  linger  thus  when  weightier 
matters  are  so  utterly  forgot.  For  we  spoke,  I  know, 
of  those  crises  that  come  to  youth,  those  mighty  ad- 
ventures of  the  spirit  in  its  eager  quests  and  wanderings 
in  a  world  still  fresh  with  dawn  and  glistening  with 
dew.  We  poured  out  our  pent-up  thoughts  and  dreams, 
talking  at  once,  finishing  each  other's  sentences,  and 
laughing  outright  in  those  delicious  ecstasies  of  dis- 
covery and  of  revelation  that  are  only  to  be  shared  so 
equally  when  life  is  young,  before  our  paths  diverge 
and  lead  us,  through  dissimilitudes  of  fortune  and 
experience,  to  the  imperfect  sympathies  of  our  matur- 
ity. Young  love  has  come  to  mean  nothing  but  the 
eternal  legend  of  lad  and  lass.  Yet  the  bonds  in 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  25 

which  two  youths  will  stray  blissfully,  all  day  long, 
by  little  rivers,  are  very  lovelike  and  lovely  to  recall. 
As  one  turns  again  those  first  idyllic  pages  of  his  life's 
romance,  it  is  hard  to  say  where  his  hand  will  pause 
and  his  eye  rest  longest.  There  are  pages  that  are 
now  too  sweet.  And  there  are  others  still  full  of 
poetry  that,  strange  as  it  would  once  have  seemed, 
have  never  a  girl  in  them  at  all! 

Yet  there  was  a  girl,  of  course,  and  if  only  she  had 
been  a  Sally  or  a  Phyllis  I  think  Jerry's  bliss  would 
have  been  complete.  Her  name  was  Huldah.  It  was 
unfortunate,  but  he  made  the  best  of  it;  and  I  am 
sure  there  must  have  been  something  English  about 
her  to  overcome  so  serious  a  defect.  For  while,  no 
doubt,  Huldah  herself  was  blameless  in  the  matter, 
it  cast  a  shadow  upon  her  parentage.  It  argued  an 
unpoetic  strain;  to  say  the  least,  a  singular  forgetful- 
ness  of  all  those  sweet  old  names  for  girls,  kept  fragrant 
in  the  lavender  of  English  verse.  I  never  saw  more 
of  her  than  a  poor  little  village  photograph  on  Jerry's 
bureau.  She  was  a  comely  schoolgirl,  and  the  English 
of  her  was  perhaps  revealed  in  one  of  his  letters  of  that 
time,  where  I  find  him  praising  "the  quiet  candour 
of  her  eyes." 

His  own  parentage  was  not  beyond  reproach.     He 


26     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

ought  to  have  been  born  in  Warwickshire.  It  was 
late  to  think  of  it,  of  course,  but  it  was  very  often 
upon  Jerry's  mind,  as  one  could  see  in  the  wistfulness 
with  which  he  showed  me,  one  by  one,  on  the  walls 
of  his  room,  copies  of  those  charming  drawings  which 
Abbey  and  Parsons  made  to  illustrate  old  English 
songs.  When  he  died,  he  told  me,  he  would  go  to 
England.  He  had,  I  remember,  a  quaint  idea  of  heaven. 
It  was  to  drink  a  mug  of  Shakespeare's  ale  in  an  Abbey 
inn,  and  pick  Wordsworth's  primroses  by  a  Parsons 
brook. 

"There's  Rugby!"  he  said,  as  we  passed  the  school- 
house —  hopelessly  wooden,  and  plain,  and  bare,  and 
painted  yellow. 

"All  but  the  vines,"  I  answered. 

"Oh,  no!"  he  assured  me.     "Not  if  you  have  eyes." 

It  will  be  plain,  I  think,  that  Jerry  Ladd  never  saw 
Toodlums  or  Huldah  at  all.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
in  his  visions  he  always  was  so  whimsical;  but  it  was 
in  this  investiture  of  the  homely  and  sharp-edged  things 
about  him  with  something  of  the  shadowy  leafage  of 
the  past  that  others  saw  in  him  both  child  and  fool. 
Childlike  indeed,  but  not  as  a  simpleton,  he  dreamed 
his  little  recompensive  dreams.  They  touched  me, 
rather,  to  a  kind  of  pity  that  one  who  was  so  fond 


THIS  DREAMER  COMETH  27 

of  what  was  gone,  and  what  was  far  from  him,  should 
be  so  caged  in  a  present  whose  sign  and  symbol  was 
little  Toodlums.  But  as  I  drove  away  from  it  forever, 
waving  my  hand  to  him  in  token  of  the  larger  future 
beyond  its  bounds,  I  found  some  pleasure  in  a  flight  of 
crows  across  the  pastures.  For  I  had  no  doubt  that 
they  were  rooks  to  him. 


II 

A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST 

SOME  years  went  by  and  I  had  long  been  freed 
from  my  apprenticeship  to  the  Gazette  when  I 
saw  him  again.  In  the  meantime  so  many 
things  had  happened  of  which  I  was  mine  own  hero, 
after  the  fashion  of  young  men,  I  paid  small  heed  to 
the  stories  of  my  former  friends.  It  was  those  years 
when,  the  prologue  over,  the  drama  of  one's  life  begins; 
and  in  its  crises,  the  past,  still  lovely  in  its  simpler 
fashion,  like  an  idyl,  lived  only  as  a  kind  of  background 
for  the  present's  storm  and  stress.  It  was  like  those 
landscape  vistas  in  the  old  masterpieces,  of  which  one 
is  but  dimly  conscious  until  the  foreground  with  its 
human  legend  has  become  familiar  to  the  eye.  I  was 
busy  with  vicissitude.  And  in  the  turmoil  of  New 
York,  and  its  bewilderment  of  strange  adventure  and 
romance,  Toodlums  and  all  the  other  little  quiet  places 
and  friendly  faces  that  I  had  known  seemed  years 
away. 

28 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       29 

Meanwhile,  I  heard  sometimes  from  Jerry  Ladd. 
Often  at  first,  in  letters  that  I  answered  faithfully  with 
chronicles  of  those  hopes  and  wonders  that  I  was 
always  tempting  him  to  share.  But,  little  by  little, 
the  intimacy  faded,  like  the  days  of  which  it  seemed  a 
part.  And  then,  quite  suddenly,  it  was  resumed  again. 

One  morning  Jeremy  came  to  town. 

"For  good,"  he  told  me,  his  face  shining  with  the 
joy  and  mystery  of  his  high  adventure. 

"But  your  mother!" 

"Oh,  she's  come  too." 

"To  stay?" 

"To  stay." 

I  laughed,  and  gasped. 

"But  the  brickyard,  man!" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"Ashes." 

"Burned  again?" 

"  No  —  just  ashes." 

He  was  all  a-smile. 

"And  the  river?" 

He  had  expected  that. 

"What  river?" 

"The  Avon,  of  course.  The  Toodlumshire  Avon. 
Surely  you  haven't  gone  back  on  the  river  ?" 


30     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

But  he  did  not  even  sigh  as  he  replied  blissfully: 

"It  flows  no  more!" 

They  had  come,  of  course,  solely  for  Jerry's  sake. 
It  was  a  venture  of  love  —  a  mother's  sacrifice  for  her 
only  son,  that  he  might  in  this  larger  world  dream 
larger  dreams.  It  was  sufficient  for  her  that  he  should 
see  ahead  of  him  a  rosy  mist.  For  herself  her  only 
future  was  of  the  past,  and  this  strange  new  present 
never  became  real  to  her  at  all.  Even  in  New  York 
she  was  in  Toodlums.  The  city,  which  it  seemed  he 
had  been  always  seeing  since  I  first  wrote  of  it  —  a 
thousand  towers  in  the  glory  of  his  rising  sun  —  was 
only  a  mirage  upon  her  evening  sky.  And  even  now 
that  she  was  really  there,  streets  to  her  never  were 
those  crowded  thoroughfares  in  which  she  found  her- 
self bewildered  and  a  little  terrified.  They  were  always 
those  village  lanes  that  she  had  known,  under  boughs 
whose  rustlings  no  traffic  ever  drowned,  and  open  to 
the  wind,  fragrant  with  the  pastures  where  it  had 
lingered,  or  cold  and  pure  as  its  glistening  trail 
of  the  untrodden  snow.  One  could  see  this  in  her 
eyes. 

They  lodged  —  Jerry  said  charmingly,  I  thought 
drearily,  and  what  his  mother  thought  one  could  only 
guess,  for  she  made  no  comment  on  the  musty  old  board- 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       31 

ing-house  that  he  had  found  for  them  —  in  an  anti- 
quated quarter  of  the  town. 

And  he  had  found  something  more.  He  had  dis- 
covered, somehow,  somewhere,  a  "legitimate  vocation." 
It  was  meagre  enough,  and  it  had  the  doubtful  character 
of  most  beginnings.  That  is  to  say,  it  was  little  more 
than  a  chance  of  becoming  something  definite.  I 
never  quite  made  out  just  what  it  was,  but  it  appeared 
to  be  a  hybrid  thing.  He  was  something  like  a  clerk, 
and  something  like  a  messenger,  in  one  of  those  odd 
unheard-of  commercial  enterprises  that  supply  details 
of  more  familiar  things.  His,  I  believe,  furnished 
some  kind  of  artificial  whalebone  for  other  houses' 
corsets.  It  was  something  very  trifling  at  any  rate 
so  far  as  Jerry  was  concerned,  though  lucrative  enough 
to  give  a  poet  —  or  whatever  he  was  —  a  foothold  in 
the  world.  I  say  a  poet,  because  while  Jerry's  legs 
were  running  errands,  his  thoughts  took  wings  and 
sailed  and  soared  above  the  city's  traffic  in  a  way  that 
I  could  only  guess  at,  from  the  hints  of  cloud-rack  in 
his  eyes. 

Now  this  is  not  a  story  of  Jerry's  legs.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  he  was  never  in  the  artificial 
whalebone  business  any  more  than  he  was  ever  really 
in  that  brickyard  back  in  Toodlums.  Just  what  he 


32     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

was,  and  where  he  was,  all  that  time  when  his  fleshly 
shadow  was  so  humbly  occupied  in  the  eyes  of  men, 
should  be  worth  inquiring.  Certainly  it  was  not  the 
whalebone  man  I  cared  for.  It  was  quite  another 
fellow,  whom  the  whalebone  people  never  dreamed 
of  —  never  hired,  never  paid.  And  if  Jeremy  had  seen 
himself  as  they  saw  him,  he  would  have  walked  straight 
down  to  that  larger  river  which  flowed  conveniently 
at  the  end  of  his  lodging  street,  and  my  story  would 
have  ended  there. 

That  he  could  rise  each  morning,  and  eat,  and  smile, 
and  even  hum  softly  and  happily  to  himself,  as  he 
went  his  way  through  the  morning  sunlight  to  the 
patent-whalebone  place,  was  due  entirely  to  the  great 
secret  throbbing  within  him,  that  he  was  not  a  patent- 
whalebone  man.  That,  not  the  sun,  was  what  made 
the  morning  shine.  It  was  that  which  made  him  laugh, 
seemingly  at  nothing,  to  the  wonder  of  the  apple-lady. 
And  it  was  that  which  nourished  him  —  the  very  body 
of  him;  for  certainly  no  mere  boarding-house  prunes 
and  tapioca  ever  accounted  for  such  animation. 

Ah,  yes!  It  was  something  to  be  alive  thus,  in- 
cognito. To  realize  what  all  those  passing  thousands 
never  noticed  and  what  his  very  friends  but  dimly 
guessed,  though  they  themselves  went  by,  each  day, 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       33 

disguised.  When  they  would  discover  him  —  the  real 
Jeremy;  when,  if  ever,  the  legend  of  his  life  would  be 
read  through  that  prosaic  chronicle  of  his  every-days, 
by  which  it  was  obscured,  it  was  impossible  to  even 
dream.  But  he  could  afford  to  wait.  The  joy  of 
youth  is  its  consciousness  of  illimitable  spaces;  that 
blissful  sense  of  far  horizons  and  ample  leisure,  years 
upon  years,  in  which  to  be  discovered  —  sometime, 
somehow,  somewhere. 
Jerry  did  not  ask,  as  yet,  if  he  had  found  himself. 


The  city  where  he  lived  — 

And  by  the  city  I  do  not  mean  my  own  New  York, 
nor  yours,  nor  any  one's.  I  mean  Jerry's.  I  mean 
the  city  where  the  real  Jerry  lived  and  moved  and  had 
his  being;  in  which,  each  morning,  he  arose  from  dreams 
to  dreams,  in  that  house  which  he  had  chosen  for 
reasons,  and  which  he  saw  with  eyes,  that  were  his  own. 
They  were,  of  course,  literary  reasons.  Dickens,  who, 
according  to  the  weather,  makes  old  houses  smile  or 
frown  at  will,  and  even  weep  upon  occasion,  after  the 
fashion  of  these  human  habitations  in  which  we  dwell, 
helped  Jerry  to  select  his  boarding-house.  It  must 
not  be  imagined  that  he  had  taken  my  advice,  and  come 


34     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

down  into  the  present  yet.  But  he  was  coming,  slowly. 
He  had  crossed  the  ocean,  though  he  could  not  be 
induced  to  stay,  and,  in  fact,  at  this  period  of  his  life, 
was  dividing  his  time  pretty  equally  between  the  old 
world  and  the  new.  Dickens,  as  I  say,  was  with  him 
when  he  chose  his  lodgings,  but  —  a  hopeful  sign  — 
Washington  Irving  was  also  of  the  party,  and  the  three 
of  them,  arm  in  arm,  wandered  up  and  down  until 
they  found  that  dear  old-fashioned  rattletrap.  In 
short,  Jeremy  was  in  United  States  history  at  last. 
It  is  true  that  he  was  not  very  far  advanced  in  it  as 
yet,  but  when  one  considers  the  long  road  that  he  had 
come  —  all  the  way  from  that  golden  Elizabethan 
age  in  the  hay-fields  of  Toodlumshire  —  he  may  be 
said,  I  think,  to  have  made  a  most  amazing  progress. 
And  now  that  he  had  gone  so  far  as  to  take  lodgings 
in  the  new  world  —  in  so  much  of  it  at  least  as  was 
still  antique  enough  to  seem  a  part  of  that  old  world 
in  which  he  was  a  loyal  subject  of  his  Queen  —  I  began 
to  hope  that  he  would  yet  be  naturalized. 

I  believe  I  used  a  word  just  now  that  was  hardly 
warranted.  This  is  not  my  story.  And  if  I  so  far 
forgot  myself,  or  rather,  if  I  so  far  forgot  my  hero  as 
to  use  my  own  eyesight  instead  of  his,  it  is  my  duty 
to  retract.  I  retract  "rattletrap."  It  was  a  lovely 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       35 

old-fashioned  mansion  in  which  Jerry  dwelt,  with  a 
wistaria  vine  upon  its  curious  portico.  A  modern 
critic  might  have  objected  that  the  paint  had  peeled. 
But  who  would  take  a  critic's  word  against  a  poet's? 
To  do  so  would  be  the  death  of  literature.  It  was 
all  in  your  eye  whether  the  paint  had  peeled  or  not. 
The  portico  was  there,  and  it  was  still  genteel  enough 
for  a  poet  to  emerge  from  it,  pulling  on  his  worn  kid 
gloves  as  carefully  as  if  he  had  not  been  going  to  the 
patent-whalebone  place  at  all  (and  he  was  not);  as  if, 
indeed,  his  appointment  was  with  Nat  Willis,  or  to 
purchase  tickets  for  the  Battery  concert,  to  hear  the 
new  singer,  Jennie  Lind. 

The  beauty  of  living  thus  in  whatever  year  one 
chooses  from  the  past  —  or  in  several  years  at  once,  in 
the  most  delectable  confusion  of  fragrant  names  and 
romantic  dates  —  is  indescribable.  When  spring  came, 
all  the  springtimes  of  half  a  century  were  sweetly 
blended  for  Jerry  Ladd.  Imagine  the  intoxication!  At 
such  times,  lingering  in  the  sweet  old  squares — Chelsea, 
or  Washington,  or  Gramercy  Park  —  he  was  beside 
himself  with  the  romance  of  life,  and  even  shed  tears 
on  one  occasion.  To  peer  through  the  tall  iron  fence 
in  Chelsea,  listening  to  the  chapel  chimes,  and  watching 
the  discreet  young  seminarians  pass  by  in  caps  and 


36     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

gowns,  under  the  ivied  walls,  was  all  too  much  for  the 
composure  of  a  man  who  had  —  the  tenses  are  a  little 
difficult  to  manage  —  who  had  studied  to  have  gone 
to  Oxford. 

Once,  too,  the  children  playing  in  Gramercy  Park 
stuck  for  a  moment  in  his  throat,  he  had  stepped  so 
suddenly  from  the  unreality  of  modern  times,  where 
his  presence  at  all  was  due  to  some  question  about 
patent  whalebone,  into  the  very  middle  of  a  Victorian 
novel  by  a  man  named  Thackeray.  And  to  come  home 
so  unexpectedly,  and  find  one's  self  again  among  those 
innocent  and  lovely  faces!  .  .  . 

It  was  all  very  tender,  and  a  little  sad.  Time  was 
flying,  and  the  world,  each  day,  somehow,  was  growing 
stranger  to  him.  Often  now  he  was  not  himself.  He 
never  could  be  sure  that  around  the  corner  somebody 
else's  New  York  might  not  run  plump  into  him.  And 
then  it  would  be  blocks,  perhaps,  before  he  could  arouse 
himself  sufficiently  to  realize  that  what  had  just  now 
startled  him  was  but  a  nightmare  after  all,  and  that 
in  reality  he  was  safe  and  sound,  a  hundred  years  ago! 

in 

We  were  sitting  in  an  old  tavern  with  sand  upon 
the  floor,  and  with  our  chops  a-broiling  on  fiery  racks 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       37 

under  our  very  eyes,  for  it  was  pay-day,  and  this,  as 
Jerry  informed  me,  was  the  only  eating-place  in  all 
New  York.  It  was  the  very  last!  And  what  folks 
would  do  when  it  was  gone,  certainly  be  was  not  the 
man  to  say.  It  was  beyond  his  imagination. 

Across  our  mugs  of  ale  his  face  was  beautiful  to 
behold.  I  had  never  seen  him  more  at  ease,  not  even  in 
Toodlumshire;  nor  had  ever  heard  him  talk  more 
eloquently.  The  coach,  I  fancy,  had  just  come  in 
with  old  Weller  on  the  box,  and  what  with  the  stir 
and  talk,  and  the  smoke  of  meats,  and  the  sizzling  at 
the  fire,  Jeremy  was  in  his  element.  It  was  a  raw 
day,  and  the  tavern  snugness  was  very  comforting. 

There  was,  at  first,  a  stranger  at  our  table  who  ap- 
peared to  be  interested  in  Jerry's  talk. 

"You  look  happier  than  most  New  Yorkers,"  he 
remarked  as  he  finished  his  dessert.  "Give  me  Chi- 
cago." 

I  was  much  amused  at  Jerry's  face.  In  fact  I  was 
a  little  doubtful  that  he  had  ever  so  much  as  heard 
of  Chicago.  Certainly  he  spoke  it  with  an  absent  air. 

"Chicago  .  .  .  But  Chicago,  somehow,  doesn't 
mean  anything  to  me.  It  hasn't  any  —  it  hasn't  any 
background,  has  it?" 

The  other  laughed  good-humouredly. 


38     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Plenty  of  foreground,  though,"  he  remarked  as  he 
pushed  back  his  plate  and  lighted  a  cigar.  And  Jerry 
shook  his  head. 

"  I  never  cared  much  for  foregrounds." 

"What's  your  line?  "  the  stranger  asked. 

"How?" 

"I  say,  what's  your  line?" 

"Oh!"  and  Jerry's  face  was  something  of  a  study. 
"Well,  I'm  —  I'm  in  the  clothes  line,  in  a  way,  1  sup- 
pose. Or  pretty  near  it.  Patent  whalebone  —  for 
corsets." 

It  took  courage  for  a  poet  to  say  that!  His  face 
flushed  a  little,  which  gave  the  stranger  a  chance  to 
remark  that  he  should  hardly  have  expected  that  a 
corset-man  would  be  so  modest.  And  he  added  as 
he  rose: 

"That's  why  you're  so  fond  of  keeping  in  the  back- 
ground, eh?  Well,  that's  right."  He  slapped  Jerry 
on  the  shoulder,  and  winked  at  me.  "That's  right, 
my  boy  —  where  corsets  are  concerned.  You  shouldn't 
have  even  eyelets  for  the  foreground ! " 

Jeremy  had  stiffened  under  the  familiarity.  He 
smiled  faintly,  but  he  said  nothing  until  we  were  alone, 
and  then  there  was  a  touch  of  weariness  in  his  voice. 

"It  used  to  be  brick,  and  they  all  had  their  little 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       39 

jokes  about  that.  And  now  it's  corsets.  That's  life, 
I  suppose.  Hello  —  a  little  banter  about  something 
that  we  don't  give  a  tinker's  damn  for  —  and  then, 
Good-bye!  What  do  we  know  about  each  other?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"It's  life,  and  it  isn't  life.  It's  not  my  life.  I'm 
not  a  corset-man." 

He  uttered  it  with  profound  contempt.  But  pres- 
ently his  voice  softened. 

"I'd  like  to  know  what  I  am.  I'd  give  a  good  deal 
to  —  find  myself." 

His  eyes  began  to  have  that  wistful  look,  which  was 
the  invariable  sign  in  them  of  coming  visions.  Oh, 
he  would  find  himself,  I  knew!  In  about  three  minutes 
he  would  be  slipping  back  through  the  last  century 
until  he  could  hobnob  with  his  own  great-grandfather. 
And  that  was  precisely  what  I  had  determined  to 
prevent.  I  had  come  that  day  with  the  intention  of 
talking  plainly;  for  it  was  high  time,  I  told  myself, 
that  he  should  stop  this  idle  dreaming,  and  begin  to 
live. 

"Look  here,  old  man,"  I  said  resolutely.  "Now 
that  you  have  condescended  to  spend  five  minutes 
in  your  own  era,  for  heaven's  sake  stay  here!" 

I  had  caught  him  just  in  time.    A  moment  later  and 


40     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

that  wistful  look  would  have  become  the  familiar  happy 
trance  from  which  I  felt  it  my  hard  but  solemn  duty 
to  rescue  him.  Instead,  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing 
that  waxing  glamour  in  his  eyes  begin  to  wane  again. 
He  came  back  slowly,  and  painfully  I  must  confess, 
into  those  harsh  realities  that  I  had  sworn  as  a  friend 
to  make  him  face.  It  was  hard,  of  course,  to  see  the 
light  grow  dim,  and  the  shadows  lengthen  in  his  eyes. 
But  he  must  play  the  man. 

"Now  that  you're  here,"  I  repeated,  fixing  him 
sternly  with  my  own  eyes  lest  he  should  again  elude 
me,  "now  that  you've  actually  come  down  into  the 
present " 

"Where  they  make  their  little  jokes,"  he  said. 
"Where  I  am  a  corset-man." 

He  smiled,  but  it  was  such  a  faint,  sad,  almost 
reproachful  smile  that  I  felt  my  heart  begin  to  soften 
toward  him,  in  the  way  it  always  did;  and  if  I  had 
not  vowed  that  day  to  save  him  from  his  fatal  lotus- 
eating  I  should  have  said  no  more. 

"Why  don't  you  do  something?"  I  demanded. 
"Why  don't  you  rise  up  and  kick  the  dashboard  into 
kindling  wood?  What  right  has  a  man  like  you,  a 
man  of  your  brains  and  heart,  to  peddle  whalebone?" 

His  face  fell.      He  uttered  not  a  word  as  I  went  on, 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       41 

relentlessly,  to  point  out  the  error  of  his  ways.  I 
poured  out,  literally,  upon  my  best  of  friends,  the 
vials  of  my  wrath.  And  when  I  had  proved  to  him, 
with  all  the  rhetoric  of  youth,  and  with  all  the  logic 
of  my  own  experience  among  men,  that  he  was  doomed 
unless  he  roused  himself  from  the  folly  of  those  lovely, 
lovely,  but  utterly  unmarketable  dreams  —  I  felt  better. 

I  cannot  say  so  much  for  Jerry. 

Poor  lad!  His  whole  frame  drooped  under  my 
heated  eloquence;  and  his  ale  —  that  good  old  English 
ale  that  was  so  nourishing  to  those  false  illusions  that 
I  had  banished  as  I  hoped  forever  —  grew  warm  and 
flat  in  his  pewter  mug. 

"Drink  up!"  I  said,  more  heartily.  "Let's  have  a 
little  Milwaukee  beer,  to  —  to  change  your  luck.  To 
celebrate  your  naturalization  papers.  Why,  man,  you 
are  an  American  citizen!  Think  of  that!  A  citizen 
of  the  most  glorious  republic  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Drink  down  old  England,  and  we'll  drink  up  the  U.S.A. 
You're  one  of  us." 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I'm  not  thirsty." 

"You're  not  angry,  I  hope?" 

"Oh,  I  can't  be  angry,"  he  confessed.  "It's  all 
true." 


42     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Well,  then,  cheer  up.  What  you  want  to  do  is 
go  to  writing.  That's  your  bent." 

"I  am  writing,"  he  answered  sadly.  "I  am  always 
writing.  But  what  difference  does  it  make?" 

1  had  never  seen  ibis  Jeremy.  And  when  I  had 
tried  for  an  hour,  but  all  in  vain,  to  soften  the  shocking 
effect  that  my  words  had  wrought  in  him  —  that  utter 
listlessness  in  which  he  listened;  when  all  that  I  could 
say  to  rouse  him  to  life  again  only  plunged  him  deeper 
into  that  deathlike  silence,  I  had  to  confess  —  though 
I  did  so  prudently,  to  myself  —  that  if  the  present 
was  so  fatal  to  him,  to  that  virile  radiance  in  which  he 
had  shone  and  sparkled  until  it  intervened,  it  were 
better,  perhaps,  to  get  him  back  again  as  soon  as 
possible  into  the  glorious  safety  of  the  past. 

"Waiter,"  I  said,  "bring  us  two  Tobies  of  good  old 
stout." 

Jerry  roused  himself. 

"No,"  he  protested  feebly,  "let's  have  the  beer." 

And  while  it  was  coming  I  seized  the  opportunity 
to  say  as  soothingly  as  possible: 

"You  have  been  unfortunate,  old  man,  in  your  ex- 
periences with  the  present.  That's  all." 

"Yes,"  he  murmured.     "They  all  come  back." 

"What  do?" 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       43 

"The  manuscripts." 

"Oh,  well,  they're  likely  to  at  first,"  I  told  him. 
"But  wait.  Have  patience.  Why,  man  alive,"  I 
cried,  striking  the  table  with  my  fist,  "  the  whole  future 
is  before  you." 

And  as  if  by  magic  —  at  the  mere  word  future  —  his 
face  brightened! 

"Ah,"  he  said,  a  new  light  dawning  in  his  eyes, 
"I  know!  I  know!" 

Before  I  was  aware  his  coat-tails  slipped,  and  van- 
ished, from  my  grasp.  There  was  no  holding  him. 
And  I  sat  and  stared!  He  had  cleared  the  Present 
at  a  bound! 

IV 

Past  or  Future  —  one  or  the  other  it  had  to  be  with 
him.  He  was  at  home  in  both.  Only  the  Present  was 
dark  and  strange  to  Jerry  Ladd;  and  there,  only,  was 
he  troubled  or  terrified  by  ghosts.  For  it  was  only  flesh 
and  blood  that  ever  haunted  him  —  the  men  of  his 
own  generation  that  made  him  quake  with  fear. 

Never  again  did  I  attempt  to  rescue  him,  to  bring 
him  either  up,  or  back,  to  date.  And  if  I  was  forever 
losing  him  in  that  maze  of  crooked  old-world  lanes 
with  which  he  was  familiar  —  for  he  was  always  darting 


44     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

down  strange  alleyways  of  time,  and  turning  queer 
old  corners  where  I  paused  bewildered  —  we  shared 
in  common  those  forward  vistas  of  life's  young  dream. 

He  showed  me  his  rejected  manuscripts.  Secretly 
I  shook  my  head  at  them,  but  openly  and  recklessly 
I  urged  him  on  to  the  expenditure  of  unknown  sums  in 
stamps,  by  which  they  travelled  up  and  down,  until, 
in  time,  encountering  nothing  but  misadventures  and 
rebuffs,  they  became  such  sorry-looking,  ragged  vaga- 
bonds that  they  did  not  dare  to  venture  any  more  into 
the  great  high  roads  of  literature,  but  slunk  along 
unfrequented  and  miry  byways,  sleeping  sometimes 
under  the  very  hedges,  exposed  to  the  editorial  ele- 
ments. Thus,  smudgy  with  tobacco  ash  and  the  drip- 
pings of  nicotine,  I  have  seen  them  since  tied  up  in 
a  melancholy  bundle;  and  on  a  bit  of  paper  slipped 
under  the  enclosing  string  I  read  in  the  familiar  hand 
of  the  most  hopeful  man  it  ever  was  my  lot  to 
know: 

Possible  Manuscripts.  Preserved  Against  Future 
Reference  or  Publication. 

Their  titles  made  a  fragrant  catalogue.     There  was: 

A  Country  Lad  —  some  reverie,  I  suppose,  of  Tood- 
lumshire. 

The  Eternal  Legend  —  young  love,  of  course,  and 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       45 

written  when  Huldah  had  become  a  mere  legendary 
heroine  herself. 

Drowsy  Waters  —  the  river  —  the  only  river  —  the 
Toodlumshire  Avon. 

Jewel  Weed  —  that  is  to  say,  the  precious  common 
things  that  bloom  about  us.  The  meditations  of  an 
old  young  man  on  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  The 
philosophy  that  youth  holds  instinctively,  in  its 
idealism;  that  maturity  forgets,  scoffs  at;  and  that  age 
comes  back  to,  as  the  fairest  harvest  of  its  experience. 

A  Whitsuntide  Pastoral —  no  need  to  say  that  this 
was  in  the  days  of  Good  Queen  Bess,  and  that  Jeremy 
and  Huldah  had  gone  a-maying.  I  assume  that  it  was 
Huldah,  though  her  name  was  Celia.  It  was  a  meadow 
love  scene,  so  innocently  simple  that  I  doubt  if  there 
is  a  girl  living  could  speak  the  maid's  part  in  it  out 
of  her  modern  little  head.  Huldah  might  have  done 
so,  for  in  those  days  ragtime  was  not  yet.  Speech  and 
song  are  as  inseparable  as  ever.  Our  utterance  is 
attuned  to  what  is  running  in  our  heads,  and  we  talk 
love  in  the  measure  and  melody  in  which  we  sing  it. 

The  High  Street  at  Lamplight  —  Fifth  Avenue  in  its 
fairest  mood.  Old  York,  to  which  he  had  come  up  by 
coach,  out  of  the  country,  on  a  wet  evening  when  the 
pavements  shone. 


46     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Under  the  Eaves  —  visions  from  that  antique  house 
in  Chelsea;  a  prose  fantasy  in  the  manner  of  Jerry's 
Uncle  Charles. 

May  in  Gramercy  Park. 

June  in  Maiden  Lane. 

July  in  Greenwich. 

August 

I  forget  where  August  was;  but,  wherever  it  was,  it 
was  hot  and  enervating,  and  by  that  time  the  other 
manuscripts  had  begun  to  look  seedy  with  their  in- 
cessant journey  ings;  and  that  fair  springtime  in  which 
Jerry  had  come  up  to  town  seemed  long  ago.  The 
August  manuscript  was  never  even  finished,  and  what 
there  was  of  it  had  nothing  of  that  earlier  bloom. 

The  titles,  as  one  reads  them  now,  are  chapter- 
headings  in  their  author's  unwritten  story  —  that 
golden  legend  of  which  mine  is  but  the  feeblest  shadow. 
I  call  it  a  legend  because,  in  my  desire  to  catch  the 
spirit  of  his  life,  I  must  so  often  forget  its  letter. 
Because,  to  be  fair  to  him,  and  true  —  as  to  any  of  us, 
for  that  matter  —  one  must  write  not  merely  under 
oath,  but  under  the  inspiration  of  a  half-forgetfulness. 
Under  revelations  too  —  those  revelations  of  glance 
and  smile,  and  of  a  word  here  and  a  word  there, 
caught  in  passing,  and,  after  years  perhaps,  pieced 


A  STRANGER  IN  OUR  MIDST       47 

together  into  a  completed  sentence  that  shall  tell  at 
last  what  once  one  could  but  partly  guess.  There 
are  scenes  here  that  I  never  witnessed,  that  I  could 
not  know,  save  in  the  mystery  of  those  divinations 
that  I  would  trust  rather  than  my  very  eyes.  And, 
intimate  though  they  are,  I  dare  to  tell  them  because 
I  know  —  yet  cannot  tell,  always,  bow  I  know  —  that 
they  are  true. 


Ill 

A  PRACTICAL  MAN 

ONE  morning  Jeremy  was  waiting  patiently 
in  the  outer  office  of  a  certain  newspaper, 
seated  solemnly,  bolt  upright,  in  a  wooden 
chair,  between  the  door  and  the  desk  of  a  little  office- 
boy.    The  lad  watched  him  out  of  a  corner  of  one 
mischievous  young  eye,  and  in  the  intervals  of  duty 
appeared  to  Jeremy  to  be  making  game  of  him,  by 
means  of  furtive  nods  and  winks  at  another  imp, 
whose  sole  business  it  was  to  loll  upon  his  comrade's 
desk  and  grin  perpetually.     It  was  uncomfortable,  like 
the  chair;  but  not  altogether  unendurable  for  a  man 
who  sat  in  one  world,  but  held  his  head  high  up  in 
another,  where  office-boys  were  never  even  dreamed  of. 
"He'll  never  do,"  whispered  the  arch-imp,  hoarsely; 
and  the  other  nodded. 
"Nope.    You  can  see  he  ain't  all  there." 
But  Jerry  looked  at  them  and  smiled.     It  was  not 
the  mere  curving  of  the  lips  that  caught  them  unawares. 
48 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  49 

It  was  that  smile  within  a  smile  —  the  smile  of  the 
real  Jeremy,  who  was,  perhaps,  so  much  a  boy  himself, 
though  an  old  one,  that  he  was  irresistible.  At  any 
rate  they  both  smiled  back. 

"Say,"  said  the  arch-imp  confidentially,  "we'll  put 
you  wise.  Don't  you  be  bluffed  by  anything  He  says" 
—  indicating  the  inner  door.  "Just  look  Him  in  the 
eye." 

Jerry  nodded.  It  was  good  advice,  however  perti- 
nent; and,  as  it  happened,  he  was  in  need  of  counsel, 
for  just  when  the  Future  had  seemed  most  promising, 
and  he  had  begun  to  live  in  it  with  heart  and  soul, 
the  Present,  with  its  customary  dampness,  had  inter- 
vened. He  was  under  a  cloud.  For  the  past  four 
months  he  had  been  writing,  writing,  writing,  at  a 
story  that  was  to  take  the  world  by  storm  —  a  novel, 
this  was;  and  just  when  it  was  about  to  be  completed, 
and  he  was  composing  not  only  its  final  chapters  but 
the  very  language  of  the  reviews  that  were  to  hail 
it  as  the  "finest  English  prose  that  we  have  read  in 
years,"  and  just,  too,  when  he  was  beginning  to  hold 
his  head  up,  and  look  the  very  Present  in  its  grimy 
face,  the  patent-whalebone  people  (not  being  in  the 
secret  of  this  unprecedented  dignity)  gave  him  a  two 
weeks'  notice  releasing  him  from  all  further  humilia- 


5o     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

tion  at  their  hands.  It  was  a  petty  incident,  too  small 
and  sordid  for  Time  to  note.  But  Time  did  note  it, 
however  Eternity  may  view  these  foolish  little  questions 
of  finance.  The  rosy  Future  turned  quite  pale,  and 
fled  to  the  horizon;  and  Jeremy,  bewildered  by  the 
sudden  darkness,  was  left  alone  where  it  was  Now  or 
Never,  and  where  even  the  counsel  of  a  friendly  office- 
boy  was  comforting. 

"Remember  now;  look  Him  in  the  eye!" 

Jerry  nodded,  gulping  hard  as  he  stood  at  last  before 
that  Dreadful  Presence  —  an  Editor  Enthroned ! 

He  was  a  mortal-looking  man;  but  like  the  monarch 
that  He  was,  He  sat  in  a  mighty  halo,  partly  of  pipe- 
smoke  and  partly  of  His  exalted  state,  so  that  Jeremy 
forgot  himself,  forgot  all  that  he  had  been,  forgot  what 
some  day  he  would  be,  when  bis  time  came,  the  glorious 
but  recreant  Future  that  had  deserted  him  in  the 
hour  of  his  need  —  and  in  answer  to  that  Awful  Voice 
replied  meekly: 

"I'm  looking  for  a  job." 

"What's  that?" 

"I  say  I'm  —  1-Iooking  for  a  job." 

The  royal  head  swayed  dubiously.  The  royal  eye 
was  lighted  by  a  baleful  fire,  and  the  royal  voice  was 
very  sorry. 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  51 

There  was  no  job. 

Then  Jeremy  remembered  the  kindly  office-boy  and 
looked  Him  in  the  eye. 

"Perhaps  you  have  a  —  g-ghost  of  a  job?" 

It  was  the  ghost  of  a  voice  that  said  it,  but  it  made 
Him  look  twice  before  he  thundered,  with  the  faintest 
glimmer  of  a  smile: 

"And  what  may  that  be?" 

Jerry  laughed.  That  is,  he  meant  it  for  a  laugh. 
It  was  really  little  more  than  a  kind  of  hoarse  grin. 

"What  is  the  ghost  of  a  job?"  demanded  the  Mighty 
One.  The  glimmer  now  had  been  extinguished,  but 
Jerry  did  not  even  wink. 

"The  ghost  of  a  job?  Why  —  the  privilege  of 
h-haunting  you,"  he  explained.  "You  know  what  I 
mean  —  b-bringing  you  things  to  print." 

The  Monarch  roared. 

"Oh!  That's  all  right,"  he  said  heartily.  "Bring 
'em  along.  Haunt  away! " 

"You  p-pay,  of  course?"  Jerry  ventured,  trying  to 
restrain  his  joy. 

"Sure!  By  the  yard.  What  are  you  going  to  write 
about?" 

"Well,  for  one  thing,  I  thought  I'd  write  about  the 
—  Streets  of  New  York." 


52     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Jerry's  ears  may  have  deceived  him,  but  they  re- 
corded just  the  ghost  of  a  royal  groan. 

"  Do  you  want  to  know  how  many  times  the  Streets 
of  New  York  have  been  written  up!  Well,  I'll  tell 
you,  young  man.  Just  nine  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  times,  to  be  exact." 

"Not  m-my  Streets  of  New  York,"  Jerry  assured 
him. 

"Humph!  Perhaps  not,"  the  editor  conceded,  be- 
ginning to  shuffle  the  papers  on  his  desk.  "Well,  bring 
'em  along  —  your  streets.  But  it's  a  wornout  theme, 
and  I  can't  give  you  any  hope." 

"Oh,  I'll  furnish  the  hope,"  Jerry  told  him,  raptur- 
ously. "That's  right  in  my  line.  And  I  have  here," 
he  confessed,  beginning  to  take  them  from  his  pockets, 
"s-several  manuscripts  that  I " 

The  editor  glanced  at  them,  and  laid  them  away 
from  him  as  far  as  possible  on  his  desk. 

"Hope's  in  your  line,  is  it?"  he  demanded  sharply, 
lighting  his  pipe  again. 

"Y-yes,  sir.  You  know  what  the  old  English  ballad 
says,  '"My  face  is  my  fortune,  sir,"  she  said.'  Well, 
Hope's  mine." 

The  editor  was  silent.  He  gazed  off  thoughtfully, 
out  of  a  very  dirty  window,  at  the  elevated  tracks, 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  53 

where,  now  and  then,  a  train  rushed  by.  Seated  thus, 
quietly,  he  did  not  appear  so  very  terrible.  In  fact, 
Jeremy,  with  his  instinctive  sympathy  for  anything  — 
man  or  beast,  king  or  peasant  —  that  gazed  off  wist- 
fully into  the  distance,  whether  of  the  Future  or  the 
Past  (and  here  it  was  the  Past,  he  knew)  felt  his  heart 
drawn  to  the  royal  meditant. 

"  Doubtless  you  began  with  a  pretty  fair  inheritance 
of  hope  yourself,"  he  ventured,  feeling  more  at  home 
now. 

"Doubtless  I  did,"  was  the  gruff  reply.  "The  fact 
is  I" — and  here  his  bulk  began  to  heave  with  some 
secret  and  irresistible  emotion  — "  I  wrote  up  the 
Streets  myself!  Yes,  sir.  It  was  the  very  first  thing 
I  did  when  I  came  to  town." 

"And  did  they  —  did  they  p-print  them?"  Jerry 
inquired,  cautiously. 

"Oh,"  was  the  equally  cautious  answer,  "they  used 
a  block  or  two,  I  guess." 

"Well,  history  repeats  itself,"  was  Jerry's  optimistic 
comment.  "And  I  don't  expect,  of  course,  to  confine 
myself  to  the  Streets.  There  must  be  some  wonder- 
ful stories  in  all  this  mob  and  uproar  —  if  one  can  find 
them." 

"  Yep  —  if  you  can  find  'em." 


54     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Things  happen  to  you  down  here,"  Jerry  remarked, 
remembering  the  patent-whalebone  episode.  "If  one 
never  finds  a  story  here,  one  is  apt  to  live  one  —  and 
never  know  it,  I  suppose." 

The  editor  shuffled  his  papers  again,  and  Jerry 
rose. 

"I  mustn't  keep  you,"  he  began 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  the  editor  growled.  "You've 
got  to  haunt  me,  of  course.  That's  understood. 
That's  the  arrangement.  But  I  don't  know  what  it 
is  —  something  or  other  —  that  ghost  in  you,  I  guess 

—  reminded  me  of  a  fellow  I  used  to  know." 

Jerry  smiled.     It  was  the  same  smile  within  a  smile 

—  the  ghost  in  his  smile  —  that  had  caught  the  office- 
boy. 

"Yourself,  perhaps?"  he  said,  respectfully. 

"Well  —  I  used  to  think  it  was  myself,"  the  editor 
confessed.  "But  I  don't  know  now.  One  either  finds 
himself,  or  loses  himself,  down  here.  You  may  not 
know  that  I  used  to  be  a  novelist." 

"Oh!"  cried  Jeremy,  for  they  were  brothers  now. 
"  I  should  like  to  read  some  of  your  books." 

The  editor  nodded. 

"So  should  I!" 

He  smiled  grimly,  and  with  his  blue  pencil  began. 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  55 

to  edit  what  was  lying  nearest  in  the  clutter  on  his 
desk.  It  is  the  customary  sign  of  royalty  that  the 
audience  is  at  an  end.  Jerry  withdrew. 

"Did  you  look  Him  in  the  eye?"  demanded  the 
office-boy. 

And  Jerry  nodded.  It  was  a  beautiful  little  office- 
boy,  with  wings.  And  it  was  a  beautiful  world  that 
he  descended  to,  floating  down  the  staircase  that  he 
had  climbed.  For  the  Future  had  come  back,  blush- 
ing for  its  base  desertion,  and  he  was  at  last  a  Jour- 
nalist. Or,  if  not  quite  a  Journalist,  he  was,  at  least, 
the  ghost  of  one. 

ii 

The  Streets  were  declined.  No  reason  was  given 
either  for  the  declination  or  for  the  thanks  with  which 
they  were  accompanied.  Nor  did  Jerry  ever  seek  one. 
But  Oxford  Through  the  Fence  was  accepted,  cut  down 
one  half,  and  Published  —  the  word  demands  a  chapter 
by  itself  —  published  in  the  Saturday  supplement  — 
item  $4.66  in  a  brown  paper  envelope  marked  Ladd. 

And  that  was  the  Beginning. 

What  Jerry  saw  the  day  that  his  Oxford  appeared 
in  print  was  one  long  beautiful  vision  extending  from 
the  news-stand  where  he  bought  it  for  himself  to  Wash- 


56     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

ington  Square,  whither  he  retired  with  it,  almost  in 
tears. 

It  was  yet  winter,  and  ice  and  snow  lay  on  the 
ground;  but  a  sudden  mildness  and  radiant  sunshine 
had  suffused  the  Square  as  with  a  tender  April  haze. 
In  its  bloom  outlines  became  indistinct  —  boughs 
seemed  clothed  in  an  impalpable  fairy  foliage,  as  if 
the  spirit  of  the  springtime  already  hovered  there 
unseen.  Hues  and  colouring  were  glorified  —  the  white 
and  gray  of  the  majestic  arch  looming  above  the  noisy 
traffic,  the  yellow  of  the  memorial  tower  holding  its 
cross  aloft  to  the  serene  and  cloudless  blue,  and  the 
rose  and  white  of  the  stately  old-fashioned  mansions, 
their  red-brick  faces  flushed  cheerfully  with  the  morn- 
ing sun.  All  objects  shared  in  this  transient  halo; 
even  the  heaps  of  dirty  snow,  the  ugly  little  park 
pagodas,  and  the  dilapidated  houses  on  the  meaner 
side  of  the  pleasaunce,  outliving  their  residential  use- 
fulness, but  lingering  on,  and  beginning  now  to  be 
frowzy  with  the  signs  of  that  encroaching  Present 
which,  all  day  long,  roared  about  the  Square,  showing 
its  teeth,  and  waiting  hungrily  for  the  time  when  all 
four  sides  —  that  fair  and  rosy  one  as  well  —  should 
become  its  prey. 

On  the  crossings,  baby-carriages  contended  for  the 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  57 

right  of  way  with  carts  and  trucks,  cabs  and  automo- 
biles, and  foreign-looking  busses.     The  paths  were  full 
of  playing  children  —  children  of  the  rich,  with  their 
gossiping  nurses,  and  children  of  the  poor  with  no  one 
to  chide  or  check  their  noisy  gambols;  while  on  the 
benches  old  men,  waiting  for  their  end,  basked  in  the 
sunlight,  blinking  and  smoking  and  muttering  to  them- 
selves, as  oblivious  of  the  nursing  bottles  and  the 
flying  snowballs  as  of  the  sparrows  feeding  at  their  feet. 
There  were  swarthy  faces  from  an  Italian  colony 
close  at  hand,  and  others,  pale  and  pinched  with  hunger 
and  despair  —  they  of  that  scattered  nation  of  the 
homeless  —  staring  blankly  at  the  beauty  of  another 
futile  day.     And,  now  and  then,  fairer  faces  passed 
from  the  rosy  houses  to  cushioned  vehicles  waiting  at 
the  curb.      On  every  side  the  same  commingling  of 
opposing  elements  —  old  and  new,  native  and  alien, 
commerce  and  home,  wealth  and  poverty,  youth  and 
age,  memories  and  hopes  —  while  over  all  presided 
the  great  white  arched  memorial  of  the  silent  and 
immutable  Past,  over-shadowing  the  clamorous  and 
ever-changing  Present.     The  Future  only  —  like  those 
premonitions  of  the  spring  transfiguring  the  winter's 
morning  —  was  a  doubtful   and  elusive  presence  in 
the  Square.     But  it  was  there  —  not  merely  nursed 


58     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

and  watched  and  guarded,  but  all  unseen  and  unsus- 
pected and  alone.  And  nowhere  was  it  half  so  real, 
or  so  supremely  beautiful,  as  where  a  young  man  sat, 
solitary,  upon  a  bench,  smiling  blissfully  to  himself, 
with  a  morning  paper  in  his  hands. 

in 

Thus  Jeremy  came  out  of  the  old  romance  into  the 
new.  From  living  backward  to  living  forward.  And, 
as  always,  the  interim  was  but  a  strip  of  foreground 
from  which  the  eye  pressed  on  eagerly  to  the  enchanted 
distance,  which  was  now  of  the  future,  where  it  had 
been,  formerly,  of  the  past. 

The  present  provided,  to  be  sure,  a  ten-cent  bottle 
of  ink,  a  tablet  of  white  paper,  and  a  window  in  a  hall 
bedroom  which  had,  for  mere  common  eyes,  a  vista 
of  a  very  lean  and  frugal  heaven,  where  the  clouds 
hung  low  sometimes,  and  were  caught  and  tethered 
with  wooden  clothes-pins.  And  it  yielded  him,  besides, 
shelter  and  a  pallid  sustenance  consisting  of  what  there 
is  only  one  word  to  fittingly  describe  —  victuals.  But 
what  were  victuals  to  Jerry  Ladd?  Truth  to  tell,  he 
would  always  rather  talk  then  eat;  and  considering  his 
boarding-place  it  was  well,  perhaps,  that  this  was  so. 

When  not  talking  he  was  sitting  at  his  window 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  59 

scratching  away  at  what  mostly  came  to  naught;  and 
the  remainder  came  to  little  enough,  so  far  as  this  world 
was  concerned.  On  the  other  it  fed  a  growing  Fame. 
Right  through  the  clothes  line  Jerry  saw  it  glow  by 
day,  until  it  filled,  all  golden,  that  strip  of  sky;  by 
night  it  sparkled  there,  a  thousand  tapers  lighting  up 
the  dark  for  him,  as  he  leaned  his  head  against  the 
pane. 

It  was  then,  sometimes,  that  he  remembered  his 
forgotten  prayers,  addressing  them  to  the  gracious 
Mystery  of  that  illumined  distance.  Sometimes,  as  if 
in  answer,  the  lights  so  dazzled  him,  or  swam  so 
strangely  in  his  eyes,  that  he  was  forced  to  close  them. 
Oftener  there  seemed  to  be  no  sign  whatever  that  he 
was  heard,  or  that  it  was  even  known  There  that  the 
manuscript  sent  off  that  day  must  not  come  back  — 
that  Here  it  was  the  eleventh  hour  of  necessity,  and 
poor,  weak  human  frailty  could  do  no  more! 

A  little  lower  than  the  angels,  there  was,  across  the 
yards,  a  high  room  like  his  own,  where  on  the  eaves- 
ledge  a  pot  of  geraniums  bloomed  by  day,  the  glimmer 
of  a  lamp  by  night.  The  room  was  occupied  by  a  girl. 
She  was  seldom  to  be  seen  and  then  only  when  she 
leaned  for  a  moment  over  her  scarlet  treasure.  That 
her  features  were  vaguely  youthlike  was  all  that  he 


60     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

ever  could  distinguish,  but  he  used  to  muse  and  imagine 
things  about  her;  and  it  pleased  him  to  think  that  she 
was  fair,  and  that  even  in  New  York,  and  doubtless  in 
poverty  as  well,  she  cherished  in  her  heart  old-fashioned 
cottage-thoughts,  like  the  flowers  on  her  sill.  In  time 
she  became  the  heroine  of  his  more  idyllic  themes, 
which  made  him  wonder,  sometimes,  what  she  would 
have  said,  could  she  have  known.  Ladlike,  he  even 
plotted  romantic  little  episodes,  in  which  her  uncon- 
scious influence  and  inspiration  in  a  young  man's  life 
were  suddenly  revealed  to  her,  to  her  amazement  and 
confusion,  in  which  her  cheeks  became  the  colour  of 
her  geranium.  It  seemed  a  pity  that  in  her  loneliness 
she  never  would  even  dream  that  she  had  cheered  and 
brightened  another  solitude.  It  never  occurred  to 
Jeremy,  I  am  sure,  that  any  one  might  be  watching 
him  —  that  his  own  life,  seemingly  so  obscure  and  futile, 
illumined  others  from  afar;  or  even  those  that  it  touched 
in  passing.  Certainly,  he  never  dreamed  that  any  one 
would  write  these  lines  of  him.  But,  youthlike,  he 
did  resent  the  barriers  of  custom  and  of  circumstance 
that  kept  him  from  sharing  those  shadowy  lives  that 
lingered  near  or  flitted  past  his  own;  and  some  notion 
of  what  the  spirit-land  would  be,  of  its  beautiful  free- 
dom and  its  untrammelled  sympathy  —  the  real  Jeremy 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  61 

and  those  other  real  ones,  released  at  last,  so  that  there 
would  be  no  longer  any  need  for  loneliness  —  brought 
to  his  musings  a  compassion  for  his  fellow-prisoners 
that  he  had  never  felt  before;  so  that  even  the  depised 
and  rejected  Present,  in  its  lights  and  shadows,  and 
its  subtle  colourings,  began  to  have  a  beauty  of  its  own. 

But  —  alas  for  any  living  in  it!  —  it  was  always  dis- 
appointing him.  It  was  always  intervening  in  the  old, 
hard,  wall-like  fashion,  between  him  and  those  fairer 
vistas  of  his  hopes.  It  was  only  meant  apparently  for 
the  so-called  Practical  Man,  who  dwelt  there  comfort- 
ably —  on  the  very  ground  that  had  been  won  for  him 
by  the  foolish  dreamers  of  the  past! 

"Ladd,"  said  the  editor  one  day,  "there's  one  nice 
thing  about  your  contributions." 

Jerry  flushed.  It  was  not  often  that  a  crumb  of 
praise  fell  to  him  from  that  full  table  where  the  prac- 
tical men  were  dining  sumptuously  every  day. 

"Yes,  sir,  there's  one  nice  thing  about  the  things 
you  write.  They  can  go  into  the  paper,  or  into  the 
waste-basket.  If  we  leave  them  out  we  shan't  be 
scooped  by  any  other  sheet.  And  if  we  put  them  in 
—  well,  that  doesn't  matter  either." 

A  practical  man  would  have  known  what  to  reply 
at  once,  but  it  was  some  moments  before  Jeremy  could 


62     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

find  his  tongue.    And  then  it  was  only  to  say,  as  he 
sat  there  softly  tearing  into  bits  the  manuscript  that 
he  had  brought  with  him  that  morning: 
"It  matters  to  me." 

IV 

Jerry's  mother  had  gone  back,  long  ago,  to  Tood- 
lums,  which  she  had  never  really  left,  and  so  there  was 
no  one  to  notice  his  bewildered  face  when  he  returned 
that  day  from  his  visit  to  the  editor.  It  was  a  crisis 
in  his  life.  And  it  was  many  a  darkened  hour  before 
his  thoughts  began  to  flow  again  to  any  purpose, 
out  of  the  confusion  into  which  they  had  been 
plunged. 

One  thing  was  clear  —  he  was  done  with  dreaming. 
There  was  to  be  no  more  reverie  in  his  life.  No  more 
star-gazing.  No  more  appointed  trysts  in  moon- 
shine, where  he  was  always  waiting  for  what  never 
came. 

He  would  face  the  Present. 

And  he  would  face  it,  not  as  a  dreamer  any  longer, 
but  as  a  practical  man.  As  a  practical  man!  He 
would  put  aside  childish  things.  Youth  also,  and  its 
bravado,  and  its  illusions.  And  the  Past,  and  the 
Future  —  they  were  non-existent.  He  would  renounce 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  63 

them  all!  And  henceforth  and  forever  he  would  dwell 
in  the  world  that  he  could  feel,  and  see,  and  hear,  and 
smell,  and  taste,  in  each  moment  as  it  passed. 

And,  as  a  practical  man,  that  world  would  claim  him 
as  its  own  —  for  better,  or  for  worse.  And  if  for  worse, 
why  then,  at  least,  he  would  have  lived,  not  merely 
dreamed.  , 

Perhaps  this  also  was  a  dream  —  disguised. 

But  if  it  was  a  dream,  there  was  as  yet  no  sign  of 
it.  He  was  in  earnest,  terribly  in  earnest,  now.  Now, 
and  Here. 

"If  one  is  ever  to  be  practical,"  he  told  himself, 
"one  must  begin  at  once." 

And  he  began  at  once! 

Then  and  there,  seated  in  his  hall  bedroom,  he  began 
life  over  again. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  no  one  ever  went  about  a  ref- 
ormation in  a  manner  more  ideally  businesslike.  He 
rose  suddenly  —  something  within  him  lifting  him  to 
his  very  feet  —  and  literally  kicked  his  past  out  of  the 
window,  where  it  vanished  somewhere  among  those 
stars  where  it  belonged. 

Then  he  lighted  the  lamp,  for  he  had  been  brooding 
in  the  dark,  and  with  one  sweep  of  his  hand  cleared  his 
table  of  every  vestige  of  his  dream  —  every  finished 


64     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

page  and  scribbled  note  —  and  seated  himself  before 
a  clean  white  sheet  of  paper. 

"In  the  first  place,"  he  told  himself,  rapping  himself 
to  order,  as  it  were  —  resolving  his  assembled  wits 
into  a  committee  of  the  whole,  with  his  will  as  chairman ; 
and,  without  any  further  preliminaries,  plunging  at  once 
into  the  heart  of  the  business  —  "in  the  first  place,  we 
have  got  to  have  a  steady  income." 

There  was  no  dissent. 

"And  to  have  a  steady  income,"  he  continued,  in 
the  same  cool,  calculating,  inevitable  tone  of  thought 
—  without  a  tremor  of  the  old  emotion,  without  a 
shadow  of  doubt  or  hesitation  or  any  fear  whatever, 
for  all  such  follies  he  had  put  behind  him  with  his 
past,  and  he  was  Master  now  —  "to  have  a  sure,  safe 
income,  always,  as  long  as  one  shall  live,  the  best  way 
is  to  go  into  business." 

The  silence  was  unanimous. 

"But  not  into  any  fly-by-night  business,"  he  warned 
himself.  "Not  into  any  doubtful  venture,  or  high- 
tension  enterprise,  at  the  mercy  of  the  wind  and  weather. 
Not  into  the  stock  market.  (The  stock  market  was  then 
and  there  eliminated.)  Nor  into  any  passing  whim 
or  novelty.  (This  was  a  rap  at  patent  whalebone, 
which  had  already  been  eliminated.) 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  65 

"No,"  Jeremy  continued  calmly,  "what  we  want 
is  some  good  old  staple  line  founded  on  Necessity. 
And,  in  particular,  a  concern  old  enough  to  have  raised 
itself  into  the  sight  of  men  —  flourishing  enough  to 
afford  a  refuge  in  its  spreading  foliage,  and  with  its 
roots  down  deep  in  the  cool,  moist  regions  of  the  solid 
earth.  (That  was  to  say,  of  course,  safe  deposit 
vaults.  And  in  his  reference  to  "a  refuge  in  its  spread- 
ing foliage,"  Jerry  had  in  mind  something  like  the 
India  House,  where  his  Uncle  Charles  Lamb  worked 
so  long,  and  came  at  last  into  a  pension.) 

"And  why  not?"  he  asked,  still  speaking  as  a  prac- 
tical man.  "When  one  is  choosing  one's  house  (and  of 
course  one  does)  why  not  choose  one  with  a  past? 
History  repeats  itself.  (Now  that  was  true  —  that 
very  moment  history  was  repeating  itself.)  A  house 
with  a  victorious  past  is  the  best  assurance  of  a  victor- 
ious future.  And  besides  "  —  here,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, Jeremy  forgot  himself;  it  was  the  shadow  of 
his  own  past  sneaking  back  from  its  banishment 
among  the  laughing  stars  — "besides,  there  is  a 
certain  charm,  even  romance,  in  an  ancient  and 
honourable  institution.  Commerce,  also,  has  its 
Oxfords!" 

There  was  a  sudden  stir  in  the  committee.    A  kind 


66     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

of  thrill  ran  through  its  members,  and  an  instant 
later  would  have  broken  into  a  tumult  of  applause. 
But  Jerry  checked  it  with  a  frown. 

"It  may  take  longer  for  a  man  to  rise  in  such  a 
house,"  he  sharply  reminded  them,  "but  once  there, 
one  has  the  assurance  that  there  will  always  be  — 
always  at  least  in  his  own  lifetime  —  something  to  rise 
to.  And  slowly,  but  surely,  in  such  a  place  faithful 
service  will  find  reward." 

Oh,  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  that.  On  that  point 
the  whole  committee  was  a  unit,  and  Jeremy  went  on 
triumphantly  to  point  the  way  to  this  accomplishment 
of  so  prudent  and  practical  a  design.  It  was  to  be 
furthered  not  in  the  usual  haphazard  fashion  (to  wit, 
advertisement),  but  by  one  long,  grim,  protracted  siege 
of  those  ivied  walls  that  he  had  in  mind.  For  even 
mills  are  muffled,  sometimes,  in  a  leafy  mantle  beauti- 
ful with  time. 

One  must  choose  his  citadel  of  trade  —  that  was  the 
first  point  —  and  then  lay  siege  to  it;  and  then  —  which 
was  more  important  even  than  the  vines  —  one  never 
must  give  up!  Never  until  one  found  some  foothold, 
though  it  be  the  humblest,  on  that  lowest  floor.  Some 
errandry,  perhaps,  or  wrappery,  or  even  sweepery,  from 
which  one  would  rise  in  time  to  higher  things. 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  67 

That  was  the  programme,  and  the  entire  committee 
voted  it  a  go. 

Well,  then,  which  house?  That  was  the  next  con- 
sideration. And  it  was  one  that  would  require  some 
time.  Haste,  obviously,  was  to  be  avoided  in  a  venture 
that  involved  a  man's  whole  future  life.  The  thought 
of  that  —  and  it  was  a  solemn  thought,  and  suffused 
the  committee  with  a  kind  of  suppressed  but  tremulous 
excitement  —  caused  even  Jeremy  to  pause.  He  had 
never  realized  before  that  the  business  world  could 
be  so  spiritually  exalting!  And  more  than  once,  as 
he  paced  the  floor  —  his  chair  had  proved  a  bit  con- 
fining —  he  had  to  calm  himself  with  the  reminder 
that,  above  all  things,  a  practical  man  must  never, 
even  in  a  crisis,  lose  his  head. 

Which  house,  then  ?  —  That  was  the  question. 
There  were  so  many  in  the  world,  it  seemed  at  first 
impossible  to  choose.  But,  as  every  practical  man  is 
well  aware,  every  question,  however  vast,  is  vertebrate; 
that  is  to  say,  is  to  be  solved  upon  some  simple  prin- 
ciple —  its  bony  skeleton,  on  which  its  bulk  depends. 

The  principle  here  was  that  of  Choice.  When  one 
can  choose  at  all,  one  chooses,  naturally,  what  is  most 
congenial.  There  was  no  earthly  reason,  then,  no 
practical  reason,  why  one,  for  example,  should  choose 


68     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

a  business  that  smelled  to  heaven  or  that  had  any 
other  disagreeable  —  however  venerable  —  concomi- 
tant. Certainly  not  when  there  were  others  in  the 
world,  equally  old,  or  famous,  or  well-rooted  in  the 
"solid  earth, "  that  were  inoffensive  —  and  even  some 
that  must  be  highly  pleasing  —  to  the  senses.  There 
would  be  no  occasion  for  accusing  a  man  of  being  un- 
practical, because  he  elected  to  sweep  out  an  ancient 
and  honourable  manufactory  of  —  let  us  say  —  frank- 
incense and  myrrh,  the  aromatic  perfumes  and  spices 
of  Araby,  or  the  nutritious  chocolate  or  fragrant  coffees 
of  our  fairer  walks  of  commerce;  or  (if  such  things 
pall  in  time),  silver,  or  silks,  or  books,  or  linens,  rather 
than  a  hoary  old  tannery,  for  example,  or  an  old- 
established,  even  vine-clad,  pharmaceutical  establish- 
ment, bottling  up  smells  from  every  corner  of  the 
odoriferous  globe.  Not  at  all.  Nor  was  there  any 
really  practical  reason  for  selecting  fish,  or  glue,  or 
grease,  or  coffins,  in  preference  say  to  wine,  with  its 
ancient  and  idyllic  lineage;  or  even  to  so  homely  a 
commodity  as  flour  —  which,  though  dusty  it  is  true, 
has  still  a  pure  white,  altogether  chaste  and  wholesome 
association  with  the  sunny  fields  and  graneries  of  the 
world,  from  Joseph's  time,  or  Ruth's,  till  now. 
;  No;  one  could  still  be  practical  and  not  forswear 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  69 

the  poetry  of  life.  Indeed,  the  more  he  thought  of 
it,  the  clearer  Jerry's  vision  grew  —  of  that  epic  com- 
merce in  which  it  was  still  man's  privilege  to  embark 
upon  romantic  seas,  as  adventurously,  as  heroically, 
as  ever,  dipping  his  very  hands  into  the  things  that 
poets  only  catalogue. 

Which  line,  then,  should  it  be? 

Not  books.  It  would  be  well,  perhaps,  to  avoid 
even  the  appearance  of  literature!  And,  on  general 
principles,  to  select  a  merchandise  not  too  elusive; 
whose  address  was  already  known.  Spices  of  Araby 
are  boxed  up  —  where?  Heaven  only  knows;  the  bill- 
boards do  not;  nor  the  newspaper  advertisements.  But 
of  the  others  ...  of  them  all,  perhaps  .  .  . 
yes,  on  the  whole  he  preferred,  he  thought,  as  a  prac- 
tical man  .  .  .  and  there  were  many  consider- 
ations in  its  favour,  both  practical  and  poetic  .  .  . 
and,  moreover,  a  certain  leaning  as  it  were,  that  was 
purely  psychical,  and  not  to  be  divined;  but  no  less 
creditable  on  that  account  —  Chocolate. 

It  was  not  merely  that  he  was  fond  of  chocolate. 
Nor  that  his  mother  might  have  had  some  qualms 
about  the  wine  trade.  Nor  simply  that  chocolate 
was  a  neat  commodity,  or  one  that  was  moral  and 
nutritious  —  notoriously  nutritious;  nor  that  its  savour 


70     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

and  flavour  were,  esthetically  speaking,  so  unobjec- 
tionable. These  were  good  reasons,  but  superficial, 
all  of  them.  There  were  other  and  profounder  ones 
that  touched  the  question  at  its  very  core.  Business 
reasons.  Reasons  that  would  appeal  at  once  to  a 
practical  man  like  Jerry  Ladd.  (J.  Ladd  he  was  to 
sign  himself  thereafter.) 

Chocolate  had  "come  to  stay."  It  was,  therefore, 
a  safe  investment  for  a  man  who  expected  to  put  all 
his  eggs  in  one  basket  —  risk  his  whole  life,  body  and 
mind  and  soul,  in  exchange  for  a  steady  income.  Choco- 
late, so  to  speak,  was  in  the  flower  of  its  commercial 
youth;  while  tea  and  coffee,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
growing  seedy.  In  a  nervous  age  they  had  lost  both 
their  glamour  and  alas!  their  reputation.  Things 
were  being  said  of  them.  The  respectable  eyed  them 
askance;  the  learned  glared  at  them  —  recommending 
chocolate!  Chocolate  —  it  took  but  one  glance  of  a 
business  eye  to  see  —  had  a  future  without  a  single 
cloud,  moral  or  scientific,  upon  its  fair  horizon.  And 
as  for  its  present,  where,  in  the  universe  of  trade,  was 
the  shelf  or  counter  so  remote,  or  so  unfrequented, 
that  the  dust  ever  settled,  or  the  spider  ever  wove 
its  web,  on  a  box  of  chocolate? 

Which  house,  then?  —  for  it  was  only  the  line  that 


A  PRACTICAL  MAN  71 

the  committee  had  agreed  upon,  without  a  murmur: 
it  was  all  so  logical  and  conclusive  as  presented  by  a 
practical  man !  Which  firm?  Their  names  were  legion. 
Which  citadel  of  chocolate  was  to  be  stormed  and 
carried  by  assault?  Which  cocoa-tree  was  to  be 
climbed?  —  well-rooted,  and  affording  in  its  spreading 
foliage  a  roost  and  refuge  for  this  Lieutenant  Buona- 
parte of  finance. 

The  committee  hesitated  —  this  was  not  a  matter 
for  the  public  ear  —  and  the  doors  were  shut,  excluding 
the  biographers.  Among  them,  however,  was  a  budding 
novelist,  who  carried  in  his  mind  a  keyhole  through 
which  the  very  deaf  might  hear.  He  knows,  but  may 
not  say,  which  house  it  was.  But  it  was  a  good  house, 
flourishing  in  the  sight  of  men;  and  its  roots  were  all 
that  could  be  desired,  even  by  the  most  conservative 
investor.  It  was  the  house  whose  cocoa  Mother  used 
to  make  —  the  Very  Best,  of  course  —  Pure  and  Un- 
adulterated. Oh,  you  may  be  sure  of  that.  And  when 
the  doors  were  opened,  and  the  biographers  rushed 
in  again,  there  was  J.  Ladd,  seated  at  his  table  in  the 
most  businesslike  manner  in  the  world  —  not  biting  at 
his  pen,  dreamerlike,  but  dictating!  —  his  Application. 

It  was  an  idyl!  Neat  of  phrase,  compact,  a  very 
compendium  of  information,  so  lucid  in  what  it  said 


72     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

and  so  suggestive  of  all  that  it  in  modesty  withheld, 
that  a  busy  business  man,  with  one  sweep  of  his  dis- 
tracted eye,  might  visualize  the  applicant.  Completely 
visualize  him:  his  lusty  youth;  its  derivation  from 
morally  reliable  and  socially  patriotic  sources;  its  ami- 
able readiness  for  any  service  however  humble;  its 
smiling  patience  founded  on  unblemished  faith  in  a 
future  where  not  a  broom-stroke  or  a  hammer-blow 
would  be  forgotten,  but  all,  in  due  course  of  time, 
would  be  rewarded;  and  not  a  word  about  the  stipend! 
All  that,  and  more!  so  that  he  must  have  been  a  very 
duffer  of  a  chocolate  manufacturer  who  would  not  have 
cried  at  once: 

"By  Jove!  The  very  man!  This  is  the  chap  we 
have  been  looking  for!" 

It  was  indeed  an  idyl;  and  when  at  last  Jeremy  had 
drafted  it  afresh,  and  addressed  the  envelope,  weary 
with  so  much  business  all  at  once  —  for  one  has  to 
grow  accustomed  to  being  practical  —  but  happy  now, 
and  once  more  hopeful,  feeling  his  feet  upon  the  solid 
earth  and  his  head  aloft  in  the  very  heaven  of  the  Pres- 
ent, he  dropped  his  letter  into  the  nearest  post-box. 
And  then,  feeling  hungry,  as  in  the  Present  one  is  apt 
to  do,  for  it  was  midnight,  he  slipped  into  an  all-night 
lunch-room  across  the  way,  for  a  cup  of 


IV 

BARBARA 

OPPOSITE  Jeremy,  across  the  tapioca  pudding, 
sat  one  of  the  young  ladies  of  the  boarding- 
house,  whose  cheerful  countenance  had  been 
a  light  to  him  in  downcast  moods.  It  was  a  plain  face, 
but  appeared  always  to  be  concealing  something  beau- 
tiful. Something,  however,  that  eluded  vigilance;  a 
presence  that  was  forever  escaping  through  the  open 
doorways  of  her  eyes,  and  lingering  playfully  about 
her  lips,  and  that  hushed  her  voice,  so  that,  however 
commonplace  her  words  might  be,  there  was  always 
an  undermessage  in  them  that  could  be  very  tender 
and  consoling. 

Before  he  was  aware,  he  found  himself  expecting  her 
each  evening,  for  it  was  seldom  otherwise  that  they 
chanced  to  meet,  and  turning  to  her  with  a  sense  of 
refuge  from  shadowy  and  uncertain  things.  There 
was  nothing  doubtful  about  Barbara;  nothing  tense  — 
nothing  belated  or  bewildered,  or  incomplete.  It  was 
73 


74     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

always  quiet  there  where  she  was;  as  if,  the  day's  work 
over,  to-morrow  could  be  entirely  trusted  to  arrive  on 
time,  and  with  its  usual  luggage,  which  she  never  lifted 
in  advance.  Like  Jerry's  mother,  she  had  for  him  a 
homely  philosophy  that,  manlike,  he  was  bound  to 
smile  at,  but  that,  manlike  also,  he  liked  to  lean  upon 
sometimes. 

"You  are  tired,  that's  all.  Never  mind;  it  will  all 
come  right.  I  know  it  will." 

Easy  to  say;  but  not  so  easy  to  believe.  And  Bar- 
bara believed  —  there  was  never  any  doubt  of  that. 
If  she  had  not,  he  never  could  have  found  such  comfort 
in  those  simple  phrases,  which  are  the  hardest  in  the 
world  for  hypocrisy  or  artifice  to  utter  feelingly,  they 
are  so  inane,  until  one,  hears  them  ring  and  echo  with 
the  voice  of  faith.  That  he  did  find  comfort  in  them, 
and  inspiration,  was  proved  sufficiently  by  the  radiance 
that,  little  by  little  as  they  talked,  always  came  back 
into  his  face. 

Barbara  was  a  typewritist  in  a  lawyer's  office,  some- 
where downtown,  where  she  must  have  been  a  prize, 
for  her  calm  speech  was  in  itself  an  affidavit  of  efficiency. 
She  was  one  of  those  women  who  never  swerve,  never 
lapse,  and  who  pass,  unwearied  and  unsmirched, 
through  rough  or  miry  ways,  as  if  predestined  to  such 


BARBARA  75 

goodness.  Or,  as  if  beloved  of  angels,  they  move  always 
in  the  safe  bright  shadow  of  unseen  wings.  There  was 
nothing  lurking  in  Barbara's  eyes,  which,  like  the  eyes 
of  children,  looked  straight  at  Jeremy  in  a  steadfast 
innocence,  whose  visions,  doubtless,  were  like  his 
own. 

"Suppose  there  are  two  hundred  on  the  waiting-list," 
she  told  him.  "Chocolate,  you  know,  is  not  the  only 
business  in  the  world.  Have  you  tried  an  advertise- 
ment?" 

He  had  not.  It  was  such  a  haphazard  method  of 
beginning  one's  career.  It  was  going  into  business 
blindfolded.  In  the  end,  however,  Jeremy  listened  to 
her  advice,  and  spent  another  practical  evening,  the 
fruit  of  which  was  this  very  plain,  businesslike  appeal. 

A  young  man,  country-bred,  with  a  certain  variety 
of  experience,  and  literary  qualifications,  and  with 
ideals  of  loyalty  and  diligence,  desires  a  connection, 
however  humble,  with  an  established  house,  where  he 
may  have  an  opportunity  to  obtain  a  sound  commercial 
training  with  hopes  of  an  advancement.  Address 
"Perseverance,"  Bulletin. 

"It  is  beautiful,"  she  told  him,  when  he  sub- 
mitted it  next  day  for  her  approval.  "Beautifully 
worded." 

And  then  she  held  it  musingly  in  her  hands. 


76     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Well,"  Jerry  explained,  modestly,  "it  is  the  simple 
truth.  It  has  that  to  commend  it.  And  it  brings  up, 
I  think  —  don't  you?  —  a  certain  picture  before  the 
mind  ?  So  that  —  so  that  the  wrong  person  would 
hardly  be  likely  to  answer  it." 

"Yes,"  she  acknowledged  gravely,  "I  think  that's 
true.  It  has  too  —  too  refined  a  sound  for  the  wrong 
person  to  reply  to  it." 

"I  did  take  pains  with  it,"  he  acknowledged,  flushing 
with  pleasure.  "I  wanted  it  to  be  myself,  so  far  as 
possible,  so  that  if  I  were  not  the  kind  of  a  man  that 
was  wanted  they  would  know  it  at  a  glance,  without 
my  troubling  them  to  send  for  me.  I  wanted,  don't 
you  see,  from  the  very  first  —  even  in  the  advertise- 
ment —  to  start  fair." 

"Oh,  you  will!"  she  murmured,  lifting  her  eyes,  and 
regarding  him  almost  with  reverence.  "  You'll  start 
fair." 

She  was  silent  a  moment,  and  then  —  some  sense  of 
duty  coming  to  the  surface  of  her  mood  —  she  roused 
herself. 

"  I  wonder,"  she  began  gently,  "if  it  wouldn't  be  wise, 
perhaps,  to  omit  the  'variety  of  experience,'  and  the 
'literary  qualifications'?  They  are  true,  of  course; 
but  business  men,  you  know,  are  apt  to  be  suspicious 


BARBARA  77 

of  the  word  'literary.'  And,  to  them,  'a  variety  of  expe- 
rience' might  suggest,  don't  you  think,  that  you  .  .  . 
never  stuck  long  at  anything?" 

"But  I  signed  it  Perseverance,  you  notice?"  Jeremy 
replied. 

"Y-yes.  That's  so.  But  don't  the  two  suggestions 
conflict  somewhat?  And  wouldn't  it  be  better,"  she 
ventured  boldly,  "to  omit  them  both  —  with  the 
'literary  qualifications'?" 

"Omit  them  all!" 

"Yes!  /  would.  And  sign  your  initials,  as  if,  don't 
you  see,  you  had  nothing  to  conceal,  even  from  your 
friends,  who  might  guess  from  them  what  you  were 
about.  And  as  for  the  'ideals  of  loyalty  and  diligence,' " 
she  added,  thoughtfully,  "well  they,  of  course,  are  pre- 
supposed. At  least  no  hard-headed  business  man  is 
going  to  take  any  stock  in  them  until  they  had  been 
demonstrated." 

"How  much  does  that  leave?"  Jerry  inquired. 

"And  I'd  take  out  the  'humble,'  too,"  she  advised 
him.  "Really!  Humility,  you  know,  is  not  an  asset 
in  New  York.  Oh,  not  at  all!  It's  all  the  other  way. 
And  the  'country-bred.'  It  doesn't  matter  where  one 
is  bred,  so  long  as  one " 

She  hesitated,  but  she  said  it  so  demurely  that  even 


78     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

a  young  man  with  "literary  qualifications"  could  hardly 
have  objected  to  the  phrase: 

"So  long  as  one  —  delivers  the  goods." 

"And  does  that,"  Jeremy  inquired  again  meekly, 
"1-Ieave  anything?" 

"Oh,  yes!    Have  you  a  pencil?" 

It  took  her  but  a  minute  —  two  at  most. 

"A  young  man,"  she  read  aloud,  while  the  pencil 
was  still  busy,  "desiring  a  commercial  training,  seeks 
employment  in  a  well-established  house;  and,  in  the 
hope  of  subsequent  advancement,  is  willing  to  begin 
his  service  without  pay.  J.  L.,  Bulletin." 

"Does  it  leave  that!"    Jeremy  exclaimed. 

"All  that!"  she  answered  quaintly,  with  just  the 
glimmer  of  a  smile.  "You  can  read  it  for  yourself." 

And  then,  at  his  complete  bewilderment,  she  began 
to  laugh  softly.  Still  he  gazed  at  her,  and  not  at 
all  at  the  revision  which  she  had  handed  him. 

"My!"  he  said.  "And  one  wouldn't  dream  of  it, 
to  look  at  you!" 

She  was  grave  at  once. 

"Wouldn't  dream  what?"  she  asked. 

"Why  —  that  you  could  be  so  practical!" 

Barbara  smiled.  But  her  face  flushed,  and  all  her 
quickness  and  precision  vanished  instantly. 


BARBARA  79 

"  It  is  something  one  has  to  be,  sometimes,"  she  con- 
fessed, slowly  lowering  her  eyes.  "  Not  what  one  wants 
to  be  .  .  .  I  don't  like  —  practical  women!" 

It  was  the  first  time  that  he  had  ever  seen  her  on 
the  verge  of  tears.  And  it  had  all  come  about  so 
suddenly,  so  strangely  —  he  could  not  quite  remember 
how,  nor  make  out  why,  nor  what  was  signified  —  nor 
how  to  comfort  her.  Praise  and  gratitude  were  of 
no  avail. 

But  he  sent  her  advertisement. 


The  only  question  had  been  that  of  pay,  but  it  all 
came  out  as  she  predicted  —  that  the  established 
houses,  like  that  of  chocolate,  were  hardly  in  need 
of  men;  and  that  the  main  thing,  in  so  general  an  ad- 
vertisement, was  to  win  the  attention  and  capture  the 
imagination  at  a  single  glance. 

"Nothing  in  the  world,"  she  contended,  "is  so  con- 
vincing of  a  man's  sincerity,  as  his  willingness  to  work 
without  pay." 

The  answers  were  few  and  disappointing.  Not  one 
from  the  vine-clad  Oxfords  of  commerce!  But  each 
of  them,  in  lieu  of  an  historic  past,  offered  him  a  modest 
salaried  present,  arched  by  a  gorgeous  rainbow,  with 


8o     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

a  pot  of  gold  at  the  other  end.  Jerry  shook  his  head 
at  them,  and  Barbara  herself  confessed  that  they  were 
not,  in  root  or  foliage,  all  that  could  be  desired  —  but 
they  were  a  beginning.  And  having,  as  it  were,  con- 
secrated himself  to  the  practical  life,  they  agreed  that 
it  was  not  for  him  "to  reason  why,"  but  to  charge 
valorously,  and  leave  the  outcome  to  the  higher 
powers. 

He  chose,  therefore,  after  the  most  careful  consider- 
ation, what  seemed  to  be  the  least  objectionable  — 
the  offer  of  a  mysterious  agency,  which  had  at  least 
the  merit  of  promising  fresh  air,  its  office  being  on  the 
eighteenth  floor.  His  duties  were  those  of  a  solicitor 
of  advertising  for  some  kind  of  novel  pocket-calendar, 
pencil  attached.  It  was  a  branch  office,  one  of  several, 
it  appeared,  in  divers  cities,  the  parent  stem  flourishing 
in  Chicago,  with  a  root-system  that  had  not  as  yet 
suffered  any  drought.  The  agent,  moreover,  was  a 
brotherly  man.  A  hearty,  generous  fellow,  who  would 
not  hear  of  employing  without  pay  a  youth  of  such 
self-sacrificing  worth,  and  who  offered  Jerry,  to 
begin  with,  ten  dollars  a  week  —  a  purely  nominal 
salary,  he  explained,  to  be  increased,  from  time  to 
time,  in  proportion  to  the  sales  of  space  in  the  little 
book. 


BARBARA  81 

At  the  end  of  a  week  Jeremy  appeared,  to  Barbara's 
inquiring  eye,  to  have  something  on  his  mind.  Just 
what,  she  was  unable  to  conjecture;  and  she  refrained 
from  questioning  him.  But  at  the  end  of  the  second 
week,  the  burden,  whatever  it  had  been,  and  been 
removed,  and  Jerry,  to  her  great  relief,  appeared  him- 
self again. 

"Well?"  she  said,  her  heart  warming  at  the  sight  of 
his  radiant  face  across  the  table.  "How  does  the  work 
go?" 

"Go?"  he  repeated.  "It's  gone!" 

"Gone!" 

"Oh,  yes.    Why " 

He  shook  his  head,  and  smiled  derisively. 

"I've  never  pretended  to  be  a  business  man,  but  it 
took  me  a  week,  just  one  week,"  he  declared  proudly, 
"to  sound  that  enterprise,  so  far,  at  least,  as  I'm  con- 
cerned." 

"Was  it  a  —  a  fake?"    Barbara  inquired. 

"No-o-o;  I  wouldn't  say  that.  Not  a  fake.  The 
concern's  all  right,  so  far  as  I  know.  And  the  scheme's 
all  right.  Nothing  important,  of  course;  but  nothing 
wrong  about  it.  And  the  agent  is  a  right  nice  chap. 
But  he  doesn't  know  anything  about  business." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 


82     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Why,  simply  this:  there  isn't  enough  work  for  two 
men  —  that's  all." 

"Isn't  enough  work!" 

"Why,  no.  One  man  can  manage  the  whole  agency 
—  manage  the  office  and  do  the  soliciting  as  well.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  there  isn't  any  office-work  worth  men- 
tioning. The  soliciting's  the  thing.  It  all  depends 
upon  that.  And  all  he  did  was  to  sit  there  and  read 
the  newspaper,  and  draw  his  salary,  while  I  went 
out  and  got  the  advertisements.  Why,  as  I  showed 
him,  there  wasn't  any  earthly  reason  why  he  should 
be  employing  me  —  or  any  other  man.  Not  the 
faintest  shadow  of  an  excuse!  He  could  do  the  work 
—  all  the  work  —  and  save  the  company  the  expense. 
My  job,  I  told  him  frankly,  was  simply  a  piece  of 
useless  extravagance;  and  I  thought  the  company 
ought  to  know  about  it." 

Barbara  gasped. 

"And  what  did  le  say  to  that?"  she  asked.  She 
had  forgotten  her  dinner. 

"Say!  What  could  he  say?  It  was  perfectly  clear. 
So  plain  that  I  don't  understand  how  it  never  had 
occurred  to  him." 

"And  what  did  you  decide  to  do  about  it?"  Barbara 
inquired  nervously. 


BARBARA  83 

"What  could  I  do?  There  was  only  one  honourable 
thing  to  do  —  considering  the  interests  of  the  house. 
I  resigned." 

"Resigned?" 

"Why,  yes.  I  couldn't  expect  him  to  resign,  you 
know." 

"And  was  he  willing?" 

"Oh,  yes.  He  seemed  willing.  He  didn't  say  much; 
but  then  the  matter  had  been  presented  so  very  plainly 
he  couldn't  say  much,  considering  the  interests  of  the 
house. 

"  But  considering  your  interests,"  Barbara  reminded 
Jeremy,  "what  are  you  going  to  do?  —  now?" 

"Well,"  he  replied  frankly,  "I  haven't  had  time  to 
think  of  that  yet.  I  don't  know.  What  would  you  do?" 

Barbara  considered.  Her  face  was  a  study.  There 
was  a  shadow  there  that  he  never  had  seen  before.  It 
was  as  if,  somehow,  she  had  met  at  last  a  problem  that 
even  her  calm  and  sanguine  temperament  was  not 
quite  sure  of  solving;  a  problem  that  carried  with  it 
a  responsibility  such  as  she  had  never  been  called 
upon  to  assume  before.  And  as  nothing  could  be 
decided  then,  the  shadow  lingered,  and  in  the  days 
that  followed  deepened  from  that  first  perplexity  to 
care.  She  had  known  his  mother  at  the  boarding- 


84     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

house,  and  the  thought  of  her  concern  for  her  only 
son,  and  of  that  son's  strange,  solitary  figure  in  the 
world  about  him,  aroused  the  mother  in  herself. 
Somehow,  without  her  knowing  it,  it  had  become  a 
duty  to  befriend  him;  and  thus,  without  his  knowing 
it,  Jeremy  became  the  burden  not  only  of  a  woman's 
thoughts,  but  of  her  very  prayers. 

HI 

Meanwhile  Jeremy,  as  the  next  best  thing  to  being 
practical,  was  polishing  his  neglected  novel,  through 
which  his  former  love,  the  river,  flowed;  and  of  which 
the  hero  was  a  poor  young  bookkeeper  in  a  lumber 
yard.  Chapter  by  chapter  he  was  showing  it  to  Bar- 
bara, who  said  to  him  one  Sunday  afternoon,  as  they 
sat  together  in  a  corner  of  the  parlour,  where  they 
chanced  to  be  alone,  "You  know,  /  think  that,  for 
some  people,  being  unpractical  is  the  most  practical 
thing  in  the  world!" 

"Just  what  do  you  mean  by  that?"  he  asked,  looking 
up  from  his  manuscript. 

"Why,  I  mean  just  this:  that,  for  some  people,  being 
unpractical  is  just  —  well,  minding  their  own  business! 
And  that,"  she  added,  "is  the  most  practical  thing  I 
know." 


BARBARA  85 


'And  so,"  he  answered,  "you  think 


"Yes,  I  do!"  she  interposed.  "I  think  that  for  you 
to  try  to  be  a  hard-headed  business  man  is  as  foolish 
and  far-fetched  as  for  a  hard-headed  business  man  to 
set  himself  up  as  a  poet,  for  example:  as  an  author." 

"But  do  you  really  think,"  Jerry  began 

"Yes,"  she  assured  him.  "I  do!  You  are  an  artist, 
a  dreamer.  And  you  have  no  business  trying  to  be 
anything  else." 

He  flushed  gratefully.  If  he  remembered,  afterward, 
that  a  kind  young  woman  is  not  necessarily  a  literary 
critic,  he  remembered,  also,  that  woman  is  famed  for 
her  intuition,  which  amounts  sometimes  to  prophetic 
vision;  and  that  the  public  is  not  made  up  of  critics, 
after  all,  but  of  "gentle  readers,"  like  Barbara.  More- 
over, though  he  could  not  know  it  at  the  time,  his  own 
case  was  exceptional  in  this  —  that  it  isn't  every 
young  literary  man  whose  first  work  is  considered 
prayerfully. 

Barbara  insisted  that  she  was  right.  That  she 
knew  he  was  an  author!  And  at  the  waving  of  that 
wand  of  faith,  which  is  the  truest  magic  in  the  world, 
Jerry's  old  visions  began  to  come  back  again,  and 
faster  and  faster,  until  his  fair  young  dream  of  life 
was  there  before  his  very  eyes  —  incarnate!  Again  it 


86     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

smiled  at  him,  bravely,  and  a  little  roseate  of  cheek, 
and  spoke  to  his  very  heart,  in  a  voice  all  tremulous 
with  earnestness,  so  that  which  was  his  dream,  and 
which  was  Barbara,  he  could  not  say! 

"  It  won't  be  easy,"  the  voice  reminded  him.  "  But, 
then,  what  road  is  easy?  Not  even  a  business  man's, 
you  know.  Why,  I  heard  Mr.  Penningwell  "  —  Mr. 
Penningwell  was  a  former  employer  of  Barbara  —  "say 
once,  to  a  junior  member  of  the  firm,  a  nice  young 
man,  but  a  little  self-satisfied  with  their  prosperity, 
'Oh,  it's  all  very  well,'  he  said,  'for  you  to  sing,  my 
boy.  Your  nest  was  feathered  for  you.  You  don't 
know  of  the  days  when  I  have  gone  down  on  my  knees 
to  bankers,  pleading  with  them  for  just  twenty-four 
hours  more!  Nor  of  the  nights  when  I've  gone  home 
feeling  that  the  end  had  come,  and  that  our  doors 
would  close  upon  the  morrow!'  You  have  your 
panics  too,"  the  voice  continued,  addressing  Jeremy. 
"  But,  then,  that's  life,  isn't  it?  —  weathering  the 
storm,  with  the  ship  leaking  ?" 

Jeremy  was  stirred.  What  a  junior  partner  Bar- 
bara would  have  made!  Imagine  her  —  Jeremy  could 
imagine  her  —  down  on  her  knees  to  Fate!  And  he 
could  imagine  Fate,  under  the  circumstances! 

"I  shouldn't  want  everything  ready-made,  for  me, 


BARBARA  87 

if  I  were  a  man,"  the  voice  confided.  "  Because,  then, 
I  wouldn't  be  apt  to  be  a  man,  would  I?" 

Jerry  thought  not. 

"And  don't  you  adore  storms!  Watching,  hoping, 
believing,  fighting!" 

Oh,  yes!  Jerry  did  —  seeing  once  more  the  poetry 
of  it  all.  Looking  into  those  two  brave,  shining  eyes 
he  felt  that  there  was  nothing  in  life  so  noble,  so  exalt- 
ing, so  divinely  beautiful,  as  Battle. 

"Victory  or  not!"  the  voice  exclaimed,  softly. 

True!  It  was  not  a  question  of  victory.  It  was  a 
question  of 

"Playing  the  man!"  the  voice  reminded  him. 

Yes,  that  was  it!  It  was  wonderful  how  his  old 
thoughts  —  that  old  idealism  which,  he  shuddered  to 
think,  he  had  so  recently  renounced  forever  —  were 
being  said  for  him.  And  by  the  very  Spirit,  a  very 
angel,  of  the  Present,  whose  voice  was  like  an  echo 
out  of  that  deserted  Past. 

"I  shall  remember,  I  shall  never  forget,"  he  told 
her  gratefully,  "that  it  was  you  who  rescued  my  old 
dream  for  me!" 

"You  will  remember,"  she  answered,  "that  there  was 
a  girl,  once,  living  in  a  boarding-house." 

"No,  no!"  he  protested.     "I  shall  remember  more, 


88     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

far  more,  than  that."  It  would  be  a  pity  if  kindness 
such  as  hers  should  be  unrequited,  fame's  junior  partner 
dwelling  in  obscurity!  "You  will  see.  I  shall  dedi- 
cate a  book  to  you." 

"More  likely,"  she  replied,  "you  will  put  me  into 
one,  as  a  minor  character." 

"I'll  make  you  a  heroine." 

"You'll  be  foolish  if  you  do,"  she  warned  him. 
"People  will  say,  'Why,  she's  no  heroine!  She  might 
be  anybody!'  You  have  to  be  Somebody  to  be  a 
heroine." 

"Ah,"  Jeremy  exclaimed,"  but  anybody  is  Somebody 
—  to  Somebody  Else!" 

And  just  then  the  bell  rang  for  tea.  It  is  the  way 
with  bells,  just  when  the  Present  is  becoming  interest- 
ing. Just  when  the  Past,  too,  had  been  restored  to 
him,  as  beautiful  as  ever.  Oh,  yes,  it  was  as  beautiful 
as  ever  .  .  .  but  he  saw  it  now  as  a  lovely  back- 
ground, for  a  fairness  that  was  very  near. 

IV 

And  she  was  right,  he  told  himself.  He  had  tried 
to  be  something  that  he  was  not.  Hereafter,  he  would 
be  unpractical  to  his  heart's  content.  He  would  mind 
his  own  business. 


BARBARA  89 

Under  the  spell  of  this  decision  he  worked  manfully 
at  his  novel,  which,  chapter  by  chapter,  as  he  revised 
it,  Barbara  copied  for  him  upon  her  typewriter.  It 
would  be  good  practice,  she  explained.  And  then, 
feeling  somehow  that  it  was  an  explanation  that  should 
be  explained,  she  added  hastily, 

"I  might  have  to  do  that  kind  of  work  some  day." 

And  as  this  also  might  seem  to  require  elucidation, 
she  said  frankly  that  she  had  thought  something  of 
setting  up  in  business  for  herself. 

This  made  things  clear,  though  it  did  not  account 
for  her  indignation  when  Jeremy  proposed  to  pay. 
She  was  curiously  sensitive  about  these  business 
matters.  When  Jeremy  promised  her  all  his  manu- 
scripts, which,  he  hinted,  might  be  considerable  if  he 
continued  to  compose  as  flowingly  as  he  was  writing 
then  —  about  365,000  words  a  year  —  she  only  smiled. 
But  when  he  continued  to  find  diversion  in  figuring 
her  profits  from  his  pen,  at  the  usual  rate  for  literary 
copying;  and  in  picturing  her  frantic  efforts  to  realize 
her  share  —  her  bills  and  duns,  and  his  subtle  makeshifts 
for  eluding  them  by  means  of  "literary"  answers, 
poems  to  her  typewriter,  first  editions  of  his  work,  fire- 
escapes,  trap-doors,  etc.  —  her  silence  became  eloquent 
enough,  and  put  an  end  to  such  commercial  themes. 


90     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

She  began  indeed  to  be  more  reticent  upon  every 
subject.  He  became  aware  of  a  shadow  upon  their 
comradeship.  Just  what  it  was  he  could  not  say,  but 
it  was  there  —  as  if,  suddenly,  their  little  golden  day 
had  grown  self-conscious,  and  knew,  in  twilight,  that 
it  was  doomed  to  pass. 

Then  came  the  time  when  the  work  was  done  at 
last,  and  submitted  to  the  publishers.  The  suspense 
was  ominous.  Jeremy  was  eager,  yet  afraid,  to  get 
his  mail.  He  complained  of  a  sinking  feeling,  some- 
where, he  thought,  "about  his  gizzard."  Trolley  cars 
made  him  strangely  seasick;  long  sea-voyages,  on  the 
contrary,  to  Staten  Island,  acted  as  restoratives;  but 
all  cures  failed  when  he  approached  the  boarding- 
house  and  remembered  what  might  be  waiting  for  him 
behind  its*  door. 

"There  is  a  letter  for  you,  Mr.  Ladd." 

That  was  bad  enough,  in  spite  of  the  chance  that 
this  letter  might  be  that  very  one  of  which  he  feared, 
now,  even  to  so  much  as  dream.  His  hands  trembled 
over  innocent  insurance  circulars;  post  cards  even 
disagreed  with  him;  and  when,  one  day,  his  landlady 
met  him  with  these  fatal  words  — 

"There  is  a  package  for  you,  Mr.  Ladd." 

— his  face  paled, he  breathed  heavily,  and,  murmuring 


BARBARA  91 

of  something  that  he  had  forgotten,  he  turned  directly 
upon  his  heel,  and  slunk  away  as  he  had  come.  It  was 
late  when  he  returned,  long  past  midnight,  when  he 
crept  back  desperately  — 

To  find  his  laundry  by  the  stairs! 

Evenings  when  Barbara  came  in  to  dinner  her  first 
swift  glance  was  at  Jerry's  face;  and  there  never  was 
any  need  for  him  to  say  that  he  had  heard  nothing. 
She  laughed  and  chatted,  and  more  freely  now,  as  she 
had  been  wont  to  do  at  first;  but  it  seemed  to  him  — 
though  it  may  have  been  the  dullness  in  his  ears  — 
that  her  gaiety  was  more  subdued,  and  less  original 
and  charming.  Sometimes  she  burst  out  frankly  with 
words  of  homely  cheer. 

"  Don't  be  disheartened.  I  had  a  dream  last  night. 
I  thought  I  saw  a  ship " 

Or,  "There's  something  coming  to  you.  I  can  see 
it,  and  it's  just  around  the  corner!" 

Though  that,  of  course,  was  not  so  encouraging  as 
the  ship.  He  loved  that  ship!  It  was  a  beautiful 
ship,  full-rigged,  and  fairly  bursting,  as  Barbara  de- 
scribed it,  with  golden  grain. 

"Just  wait  and  see!"  she  urged. 

And  Jeremy  would  groan: 

"I  am  waiting!" 


92     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Eat  something  —  do!  You  scarcely  touch  any- 
thing any  more." 

"But  I'm  not  hungry  any  more!" 

"  Eat,  anyway.     Please  —  have  my  piece  of  pie." 

It  was  the  least,  she  explained,  that  she  could  do  for 
him,  and  to  his  helplessness  it  may  have  seemed  the 
most  that  she  could  do,  in  his  ignorance  that  she  was 
doing  more;  though  there  were  moments  when,  standing 
sleepless  by  his  window,  gazing  up  at  that  strip  of 
glistening  stars,  he  wondered  vaguely  if  they  had  one 
half  the  influence  with  editors  that  they  have  over 
the  poor  young  authors  who  put  them  into  love-stories, 
to  make  them  true.  What  was  there  beyond  those 
stars,  he  asked  himself,  that  possibly  could  care  about 
a  tale  of  Toodlums?  There  was  no  answer.  But 
when  the  manuscript  came  back,  that  seemed  the 
answer. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  gazing  at  it  without  a  tremor,  now 
that  it  was  really  there.  "I  wonder  what  this  is?" 

And  he  took  it  up  with  him,  and  shut  the  door. 


Barbara,  entering  the  dining-room,  and,  noting  from 
the  threshold  that  Jeremy  was  not  there,  paused  an 
instant,  and  then  turned  back.  At  the  stairs  she 


BARBARA  93 

hesitated;  but  again  it  was  only  for  a  moment,  and  she 
went  up  quickly  and  knocked  upon  his  door. 

There  was  at  first  no  answer.  But  she  knocked 
again;  and  this  time  so  much  more  softly  that  he  knew. 
She  heard  his  step.  Then  the  door  opened,  and  they 
were  looking  into  each  other's  eyes. 

"Have  you  been  to  dinner?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I'm  not  hungry,"  he  began 

"Nor  I!"  she  told  him.  She  spoke  breathlessly. 
"I  thought  —  I  thought  that  maybe  you  would  take 
me  for  a  walk?  But  not,  of  course,  if  you " 

Her  cheeks  flushed. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I  should  like  to  go." 

"Really?"  she  demanded.     "Really?" 

"Really,"  he  assured  her.  "It  was  kind  of  you  to 
think  of  it." 

"I  wanted  to  talk  with  you,"  she  explained,  as  they 
passed  together  out  into  the  evening  glow.  "I  have 
been  thinking  —  things  that  I  wanted  to  say  to  you 
before  you  had  any  chance  to  be  disheartened.  Be- 
fore"—  and  she  slipped  her  hand  into  his  arm  — 
"before  any  great  disappointment  intervened." 

And  before  he  could  reply,  she  went  on  eagerly: 

"I  wanted  to  remind  you  that  it  isn't  of  any  real 


94     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

importance,  whether  —  whether  it  comes  back  or 
not!" 

"Not  of  any  real  importance  ?"  he  repeated. 

"No!"  And  he  knew  without  looking  that  her 
face  was  all  a-Iight  with  earnestness.  "Because, 
after  all,  either  event  would  be  only  an  incident. 
In  itself,  nothing — nothing  —  unless  you  make  it 
so." 

"Unless  I  make  it  so!" 

"Why,  yes!  Oh,  don't  you  see  that  its  importance  is 
just  whatever  you  invest  it  with?  That  it  is  vital,  for 
joy  or  sorrow,  only  as  you  make  it  vital?  That  it 
rests  with  you,  not  with  the  editors!" 

"And  there  are  so  many  things,"  she  added  hastily, 
as  if  she  were  still  afraid  to  let  him  speak,  "that  are 
so  much  more  vital  to  one's  life  than  the  fulfillment 
of  any  single  dream.  Certainly  than  the  merest  in- 
cident, the  merest  shadow  of  that  dream !  You  are  a 
man,  first;  a  writer  afterward.  And  disappointment, 
even  if  it  were  not  the  first,  if  it  were  the  very  last 
of  a  lifetime  of  disappointments,  and  even  though  it 
defeated  the  writer  in  you  forever,  might  be  the 
making  —  oh,  it  might  be  the  very  crowning  —  of  the 
man.  Victory  in  defeat,  you  know:  the  old,  old  story 
of  idealism." 


BARBARA  95 

He  would  have  spoken,  but  she  had,  to-night,  a  posi- 
tive genius  for  intervention. 

"  I  mean  to  say  that  you  are  not  bound  to  succeed 
as  a  writer.  Only  as  a  man." 

"  But  the  two,"  he  managed  to  interpose 

"The  two,"  she  insisted,  "are  not  inseparable,  unless 
you  make  them  so." 

"You  said " 

"I  know.  I  said  you  were  a  writer.  But  you  said, 
too,  that  I  was  'practical,'  you  remember.  Well,  I 
aw  practical;  and  you  are  a  writer.  But  we  are  some- 
thing more  I  hope!" 

"  You  are  something  more!"  he  told  her. 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her.  It  was  the  same  look 
of  surprise  and  wonder  that  he  had  given  her  when  he 
called  her  practical,  striving  to  see  more  clearly,  in 
the  face,  half  turned  to  him,  what  no  one  ever  sees  at 
once. 

"Oh,  yes!  You  are  something  more,"  he  said.  "Very 
much  more;  though  being  practical  is  not  a  little  thing 
to  me  —  it  is  so  impossible,  apparently!  But  you  are 
more  than  that." 

How  much  more  he  did  not,  could  not,  say.  What 
she  really  was,  was  beyond  his  sight  as  yet,  however 
he  might  gaze  at  her  and  wonder.  He  only  knew  that 


96     THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

she  was  fairer  than  he  had  thought.  It  astonished  him 
that  he  had  never  noted,  until  to-night,  the  exquisite 
delicacy  of  her  face  in  its  repose.  It  never  occurred 
to  him  that  until  to-night  —  indeed,  until  that  very 
moment  of  his  wondering  acknowledgement  —  her  face 
had  never,  in  his  presence,  known  repose,  content: 
that  peace,  and  its  mysterious  beauty  which  are  never 
in  the  face  until  they  are  in  the  heart,  and  never  in  the 
heart  until  one  knows  for  sure  that  something  of  one's 
secret  self  has  been  revealed  at  last,  in  spite  of  the 
barriers  that  flesh,  or  circumstance,  have  offered  to 
the  imprisoned  soul. 

It  was  a  long  walk  —  no  matter  where.  They  took 
no  account  of  any  journeying  but  that  other  one  in 
which  they  wandered,  secretly,  through  unseen  ways, 
whose  shadows  her  presence,  rather  than  her  fair 
philosophy,  softened  for  him.  Her  silence  was  more 
kind,  more  eloquent,  than  any  words  that  she  could 
find  to  say.  And  when  he  would  have  told  her 

"You  needn't!"  she  interposed,  softly.  "I  have 
known  it  all  the  time.  And  it  doesn't  matter  —  does 
it?" 

No.  Nothing  —  no  disappointment,  or  chagrin  — 
had  ever  mattered  less  to  him!  It  was  very  strange, 
and  very  sweet,  to  care  so  little.  To  see  it  all  as  the 


BARBARA  97 

merest  incident,  as  she  had  said;  as  the  merest  shadow 
of  a  dream,  that  was  not  yet  over,  not  yet  unfulfilled, 
or  hopeless,  while  she  was  near. 

This  was  a  miracle  that  he  had  never  known  before. 
A  magic  that  could  so  transfigure  the  very  Present, 
that,  with  all  its  grimness,  it  began  to  have  something 
of  that  beauty  which  he  had  never  seen,  save  in  the 
Past  or  Future. 

And  he  was  only  beginning  to  see  her! 

For  Barbara  also,  the  Present  had  its  sudden  love- 
liness. 

She  was  beginning  to  be  seen. 


THE  NOW 

C~~IE  the  watched  pot  that  never  boils,  no  self- 
respecting  dream  ever  comes  true  in  the  hour, 
or  quite  in  the  fashion,  of  our  hopes  for  it.      It 
lurks,  or  sulks,  until  the  back  is  turned,  and  then  — 
for  beauty  always  will  have  its  own  sweet  way  —  steals 
in  upon  us  unawares;  or  throws  off  its  disguise  of  home- 
liness, and  lo!  we  see  that  it  was  there  already.     We 
knew  the  dream,  but  did  not  recognize  its  strange 
reality. 

Thus  now  to  Jeremy,  when  letters  w  re  neither  to 
be  feared  nor  hoped  for  any  longer,  came  one  from  — 
of  all  the  last  persons  in  the  world  to  write  to  him  — 
the  editor.  And,  of  all  the  last  things  that  he  ever 
would  have  dreamed  of  dreaming  of,  it  offered  him  a 
Job.  Not  the  ghost  of  one  —  a  real  one  this  time,  with 
a  jingle  in  its  pocket. 

"You  might  have  had  it  six  weeks  ago,"  the  editor 
informed  him,  when  Jeremy  appeared  once  more  at 
98 


THE  NOW  99 

the  deserted  office,  this  time  to  stay.  "Where  in 
thunder  have  you  been  keeping  yourself?" 

"Why,  you  said,  you  know " 

"What  did  I  say?" 

"That  my  stuff  was  fit  only  for  the  waste-paper 
basket." 

"  Did  I  say  that?  " 

"  Practically." 

"Humpf!" 

"So  I  took  you  at  your  word." 

"You  ought  never  to  do  that!" 

"In  fact,"  Jeremy  confessed,  "I  gave  up  writing 
altogether  —  for  a  time." 

"What  did  you  do  then?" 

"Why,  I  —  I  went  into  business  —  as  it  were." 

"As  it  were!" 

"As  it  weren't!"  Jeremy  acknowledged. 

"  But  you're  not  a  business  man." 

"What  makes  you  think  that?" 

"Well,  for  one  thing  you  took  me  at  my  word.  No 
business  man  ever  would  have  done  that." 

"  But  I  thought  you  meant  it." 

"Probably  I  did.     What  difference  did  that  make?" 

"Well,  it  made  a  considerable  difference  to  me!" 
Jeremy  assured  him,  rueful'y-  "  But  it's  all  right  now. 


ioo  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Why,  I'm  just  beginning  to  live!  I've  been  a  little 
slow  growing  up,"  he  confessed,  "but  I've  had  my 
eyes  opened.  You  have  no  idea  what  a  change  these 
last  few  weeks  have  made!  I'm  beginning  to  see 
things  differently.  Everything!" 

"Humpf!    How  are  you  beginning  to  see  things?" 

Jeremy  pondered. 

"  It's  pretty  hard  to  put  it  in  a  word,"  he  said.  "  But 
I'm  beginning  to  see  the  romance  of  life.  The  drama 
of  it.  The  poetry  of  it  —  of  the  every-day,  common 
life,  I  mean.  This  life,"  he  explained,  looking  far  off, 
and  straight  through  the  editor's  grizzled  head,  which 
he  apparently  did  not  see  at  all.  "I'm  beginning  to 
see  the  life  right  here  about  us  —  now.  That's  it : 
the  Now!"  he  exclaimed,  finding  the  word  for  it  at  last. 
"  I'm  beginning  to  see  the  Now  !  The  Romance  of  the 
Now!" 

"Always  before,"  he  went  on  thoughtfully,  "I'm 
afraid  I've  been  a  —  a  good  deal  of  a  —  what  you 
would  call  a  —  dreamer!"  His  face  flushed  a  little  at 
all  the  folly  that  the  word  recalled.  "But  now,"  he 
added,  "I'm  beginning  to  see  things  as  they  are." 

"How  do  you  know  that  you  are  beginning  to  see 
things  as  they  are?"  the  editor  demanded,  though  in 
a  mild  tone  that  invited  confidence. 


THE  NOW  101 

"Because,"  Jeremy  replied,  "they  are  so  much  more 
interesting,  so  much  more  thrilling,  so  much  more 
beautiful  than  they  ever  seemed  before!" 

The  editor  reflected.  He  too,  before  he  was  aware 
of  it,  was  beginning  to  look  off,  and  see  things.  It  was 
a  strange  influence  that  Jerry  always  had.  It  may 
have  been  his  eyes  —  the  light  in  them,  so  mysteriously 
rapt;  or  his  voice,  with  its  subtle  and  contagious  note 
of  awe.  But,  wherever  Jerry  was,  there  was  reverie 
weaving  its  silvery  web,  so  silently,  so  swiftly  that 
before  they  knew  it  men  found  themselves  enmeshed. 
The  weaving,  from  one  heartstring  to  another,  stirred 
sometimes  faint  echoes  of  forgotten  song.  Old  love- 
songs,  chiefly  —  love,  I  mean,  of  life.  Men  who  had 
neglected,  or  who  hated,  or  dreaded,  to  look  back, 
found  themselves  seeing  things  again  that  softened 
every  hardened  fibre  of  their  thoughts.  Old  roseate 
vistas,  renounced  as  folly  and  illusion,  would  open  up 
again,  making  them  wonder  where  their  eyes  had  been 
all  those  intervening  years;  and  whether,  after  all,  they 
had  not  been  blinder  in  their  knowledge  than  in  their 
innocence.  And  then,  sometimes,  like  the  editor,  they 
would  break  the  web,  half  angry,  or  ashamed,  to  have 
been  caught  in  such  a  childish  lure  —  as  if  they  had 
been  discovered  reading  fairy  tales. 


102   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Humpf!  I  put  all  that  in  the  waste-basket  long 
ago!  And  now  you  come  in  here  —  confound  you  — 
you're  a  nice  fellow,  Ladd,  but  —  I've  got  to  work! 
I  haven't  time  to  gawp  at  life!  You  haven't  either. 
What  the  devil  do  you  mean  by  always " 

Jerry  would  have  retired  precipitately  to  the  door, 
but  his  flight  was  checked,  sternly. 

"Here,  you  —  dreamer!  Come  back.  Now  don't 
you  run  away  again  and  go  into  business !  Understand? 
You  remember  what  I  told  you?" 

"W-which?"  Jeremy  inquired,  cautiously. 

"Which!"  The  lightning  in  the  editorial  eyes  was 
followed  instantly  by  thunder.  "Why,  that  you're 
not  to  be  always  taking  people  at  their  word,  that's  all. 
What  I  said  just  now  was  true  enough,  heaven  knows; 
but  that's  no  reason  why  you  should  up  and  run,  and 
commit  suicide  in  Wall  street!" 

"I've r-renounced  Wall  Street,"  Jeremy  assured  him, 
"f-forever." 

"Very  well,  then.     But  look  here " 

It  was  a  fierce  glare,  and  blinding  to  eyes  accustomed 
to  the  softer  light  of  far  perspectives. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  this  evening?" 

"N-nothing." 

"All  right,  then.     You  can  come  home  with  me  to 


THE  NOW  103 

dinner.  Now,  you  understand!  I  mean  this,  every 
word  of  it.  And  I  don't  ask  every  bally  idiot  to  go 
home  with  me.  No,  sir!  It's  the  only  place  that  I've 
got  left  to " 

The  glare  faded,  just  sufficiently  to  warrant  the  con- 
clusion   

" —  see  things  as  they  are!" 

And,  oddly  enough,  as  Jerry  stood  there  facing  the 
editor  —  looking  him,  as  the  little  office-boy  had  said,  in 
the  eye  —  the  glare  vanished,  and,  before  he  was  aware 
of  it,  the  editor  himself  was  looking  off  again,  straight 
through  Jerry's  head,  so  that  Jerry  withdrew  without 
his  knowing  it,  and  he  was  left  alone  with  his  thoughts 
in  a  foolish  haze. 

"Hang  these  dreamers!"  he  muttered  to  himself, 
ruffling  the  papers  on  his  desk.  "And  hang  their 

Now!" 

ii 

But  it  was  a  pleasant  Now.  A  regular  income  is 
always  an  agreeable  thing,  and  lends  colour  even  to 
one's  dreams.  A  fast  colour  that  does  not  ebb  and 
flow  like  those  elusive  dyes  which  one  procures  from 
rainbows. 

The  editor  had  offered  Jeremy  a  job;  but  it  was  not 
a  job  that  Jeremy  accepted.  It  was  a  solemn  mission. 


104   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

And  it  was  as  a  knight  of  the  ancient  and  eternal 
chivalry  that  Jerry  sallied  forth  each  morning  upon 
those  quests  that  led  him  up  and  down  the  highways 
and  byways  of  that  world  whose  drama  and  romance 
he  had  begun  to  see.  Upstairs  and  downstairs,  into 
the  houses  and  offices  and  meeting  places  of  his  fellow- 
men,  he  wandered  in  an  errantry  of  subtler  and  more 
romantic  purposes  than  those  on  which  he  was  de- 
spatched. For  he  sought  not  merely  facts,  he  told 
himself,  but  rights  to  be  championed  and  wrongs  to 
be  redeemed.  This  consecration  transfigured  even  the 
humblest  mission  with  the  high  hope  that  imprisoned 
in  the  homely  and  routine  —  such  assignments  as  are 
usually  entrusted  to  young  knights  of  journalism  — 
he  would  find  fair  truths  to  be  released:  truths  only  to 
be  descried  by  an  eagle  eye,  and  only  to  be  rescued 
by  the  valour  of  a  lion  heart,  and  the  might  of  an  un- 
sheathed pen.  Even  a  statistical  report,  such  as  he 
found  in  public  offices,  he  warned  himself,  might  be  a 
donjon-keep,  concealing  dark  deeds  from  the  outer 
sun.  He  watched  vigilantly,  questioned  cunningly, 
listened  thoughtfully,  lest  any  Lady  should  sigh  or 
perish  in  a  tower,  while  he  rode  by. 

"Every  assignment  has  its  story,"  was  the  motto 
on  his  crest.     "I'll  find  it!"  was  his  vow. 


THE  NOW  105 

"But  you  don't  have  to  find  it!"  he  was  told.  It 
was  an  old,  gray-headed  man-at-arms  who  said  it. 
"You  don't  have  to  find  it,  boy.  It  has  been  found 
for  you  already.  You  don't  expect,  do  you,  to  find  any- 
thing that  we  have  missed?  What  have  we  been  living 
for,  all  these  years?  There  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun.  The  moulds  are  ready  for  you." 

"I  don't  understand." 

"Why,  it's  plain  as  day.  Everything  that  happens 
has  happened  before,  time  and  again,  and  been  written 
for  you.  We've  made  the  moulds  for  you,  hard  and 
fast.  The  moulds  are  the  traditions.  Use 'em.  They're 
yours.  You  have  only  to  reach  up  your  hand  and  take 
'em  down.  You  don't  understand?" 

"Not  quite." 

"Why,  look  here:  take  the  suicide  story.  There  are 
moulds  for  that.  Girl  jumps  into  the  river.  Well, 
you  haven't  time  —  none  of  us  has  —  to  hunt  out  that 
old,  old  tale  —  old  as  the  everlasting  hills!  You  take 
down  the  matrix,  and  be  thankful  that  it's  all  so  easy. 
It's  labelled  for  you:  Pretty  Girl  Suicides  for  Love. 
You  can't  go  wrong.  What's  more,  it's  true!  What 
does  life  amount  to?  It's  only  a  shuffling  of  names 
and  dates." 

"But  suppose  she  isn't  pretty?" 


106   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Every  girl's  pretty!    Go  ask  the  moulds." 

" But  suppose  it  wasn't  love?" 

"  It's  always  love!  The  moulds  will  tell  you  so.  All 
girls  that  suicide,  suicide  for  love.  It's  the  history  of 
the  phenomenon.  Arsenic  or  water  —  it's  all  the  same. 
There's  a  man  in  the  case,  you  can  bet  your  salary 
—  though  he  may  have  been  a  ghost!" 

Jerry  shook  his  head. 

"That's  putting  stories,  into  life,"  he  said,  "not 
drawing  stories  out.  It's  the  truth  we're  after;  not 
what  we  guess,  or  imagine,  or  have  heard  as  truth.'' 

"Oh,  is  it,  though!" 

"And  the  truth,"  cried  Jeremy,  "isn't  just  what  it 
seems  to  be,  at  the  first  glance.  Or  what  we  imagined 
it  would  be  at  all.  Take  the  weather-story  yesterday." 

"Go  on.  I  wrote  it,"  said  the  man-at-arms.  "Go 
on,"  he  insisted  calmly.  "/  shan't  mind." 

"Well,"  Jeremy  confessed,  "you  jumped  to  unwar- 
rantable conclusions." 

"Go  on.    Proceed." 

"It  was  hot  for  autumn;  but  it  wasn't  true,  that 
mankind  got  out  it's  old  straw  hat!  All  down  Broad- 
way men  were  mopping  their  faces  and  suffering  from 
the  heat ;  but  not  a  single  straw  was  to  be  seen.  I 
noticed  it  particularly." 


:THE  NOW  107 

The  other  laughed. 

"Oh,  well,  that  was  only  a  way,  an  easy  way,  of 
telling  the  truth:  of  saying  that  it  was  hot.  Only  a 
journalistic  figure,  as  it  were,  of  speech,  to  say  bow 
hot  —  so  hot  that  Man  went  and  got  out  his  old  straw 
hat  again.  The  Return  of  Summer  —  dear  old  mould!" 
said  the  man-at-arms.  "  Many's  the  blistering  autumn 
day  I've  used  it,  and" — he  winked  solemnly — "kept 
cool!" 

"Ah,  yes,"  the  young  knight  protested,  "but  there 
was  a  story  there  —  a  true  story  —  the  one  you  missed 
by  keeping  cool.  The  truth  that,  for  habit  and  custom, 
Man  would  roast  rather  than  be  comfortable.  That 
was  the  weather-story  yesterday." 

The  other  yawned. 

"Possibly.  Possibly.  If  you  want  to  weigh  thistle- 
down. /  don't.  There  isn't  time.  And  while  you 
are  balancing  your  fluffy  little  truths  and  phrases,  the 
paper  goes  to  press! —  I  cool,  you  hot;  my  story  in, 
your  story  out.  And  what  fills  the  paper,  fills  the  little 
brown  Saturday  envelope,  my  lad!  Remember  that!" 

Jerry  shook  his  head.  He  said  no  more,  but,  in  the 
secret  chambers  of  his  heart,  he  polished  up  his  shield 
and  lance,  and  sallied  forth  more  sure  than  ever  that 
his  creed  was  best;  and  that,  in  the  end,  Truth  would 


io8  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

assert  itself  as  the  thing  most  practical  as  well  as  beau- 
tiful, even  in  a  world  of  moulds  and  expediency.  But, 
right  or  wrong,  under  that  banner  he  would  fight  and 
live,  or  fight  and  die,  faithful  to  his  vows. 

in 

Alas !  Even  in  the  beginning-to-be-romantic  Now,  the 
days  would  pass  without  adventure,  until,  sometimes, 
it  seemed  to  Jeremy  that  not  men  only,  but  life  itself, 
mocked  his  high  thoughts  of  it,  with  low  realities.  But 
then,  again,  he  would  remind  himself  that  for  knights 
always  there  must  have  been  long  days  of  spiritual 
famine,  through  which  they  roved,  thirsting  and  hun- 
gering for  opportunity.  Always,  for  heroes  as  for  com- 
mon men,  there  must  have  been  the  dust  and  heat: 
the  unheroic  dust  and  heat,  not  of  high  battle,  but 
of  the  long,  low,  drowsy,  noonday  road  across  the  plain, 
without  an  inn,  without  a  brook  or  bough,  to  cheer 
or  shelter  them;  and  the  small  pestiferous  annoyances, 
frustrations,  and  miscalculations,  and  all  the  little 
nipping  fleas  of  circumstance,  mocking  their  lofty  calm 
and  the  midnight  vows  of  their  idealism. 

All  this  was  helpful  to  a  maiden  knight.  It  was 
cheering  to  recall  when  the  Now  eluded  him  —  lurking, 
or  sulking,  like  any  other  lovely  dream,  refusing  to 


THE  NOW  109 

be  realized.  When,  here  before  his  very  eyes,  the 
Present,  veiling  its  romantic  heart  from  him,  seemed 
often  as  far  and  unapproachable  as  ever  the  Past  had 
been,  or  the  Future,  in  his  earlier  visions.  He  knew 
that  there  was  romance,  somewhere  beneath  that 
humdrum  surface  —  somewhere  behind  that  jesting 
face  of  things.  That,  in  disguise,  fair  truths  slipped  by, 
lonely  and  friendless,  in  the  throngs;  and  that,  all 
about  him,  life's  loveliest  graces  were  sighing  out 
imprisoned  lives,  in  towers,  even  as  he  watched  and 
waited,  listening  for  their  faintest  call,  and  armed  and 
ready  to  succour  and  restore. 

And  it  was  always  then  —  then  when  he  was  bravest, 
truest,  eagerest  —  that  the  Now  would  laugh  at  him! 
At  that  futile  chivalry,  at  that  chaste,  dumb  wistfulness 
of  Youth.  That  was  the  one  inexplicable,  dishearten- 
ing, humiliating  thing  about  the  Now.  Its  untimely 
and  utterly  irreverent  facetiousness !  It  would  never 
take  him  seriously;  and,  what  was  worse,  to  make  a 
fool  of  him,  was  always  willing  to  sacrifice  itself!  —  its 
native  dignity,  its  secret  beauty,  of  which  he  caught 
but  fleeting  gleams  and  shadows,  while  it  cut  strange 
capers  and  played  odd  pranks  with  him,  nudging  his 
sword-arm,  or  mimicking  his  braced  and  sober  gallan- 
try, and  twiddling  its  fingers  at  his  wrath!  It  was 


no  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

enough,  sometimes,  to  make  one  doubt;  to  make  one 
fling  his  lance  into  the  dust,  and  join  the  laugh,  swear- 
ing that  life  was  but  a  jest. 

And  yet  —  no  —  while  in  all  that  low  buffoonery 
there  remained  one  single  gleam  of  a  divine  romance, 
he  would  be  true  to  it!  Always,  for  knights  of  the 
eternal  order  of  idealism,  there  must  have  been  these 
clownish  mockeries  along  the  road  —  these  empty  grins 
to  pass,  and  never  see;  this  gutter  persiflage  bringing 
the  blush  into  the  cheek,  yet  never  to  be  heard,  or 
answered.  Always,  before,  the  scorching  plain ;  always, 
in  the  dust  behind,  the  alien  village  and  its  hoarse 
derision  —  even  for  heroes. 

"Hi,  there!  what  are  you  dreaming  of  ?" 

It  was  the  voice  of  the  Now,  roaring  through  the 
editor. 

"Oh!  I  was  thinking,  that  was  all." 

"What  were  you  thinking?" 

"I  was  thinking,"  Jeremy  replied,  "that  —  I'd  for- 
gotten my  handkerchief." 

"Humpf!  It  must  have  been  a  glorious  handker- 
chief! Why,  say,  you  looked  like  Joan  of  Arc,  or 
Francis  of  Assisi:  they  were  always  seeing  hand- 
kerchiefs. Same  kind  of  wild  eyes  as  yours,  exactly. 
But,  to  come  back  to  earth,  here  is  a  handkerchief  — 


THE  NOW  in 

a  regular  bandanna  for  you.  Fact!  A  regular  buc- 
caneer's bandanna!  A  riproaring  sea-yarn,  my  hearty 
—  A  Tale  of  the  Spanish  Main!  Run  down  and  find 
Cap'n  Jack  Smith  of  the  Schooner  Ida  —  864  Back- 
water Street.  Just  in  from  Barbadoes  with  a  cargo 
of  mutineers.  And  say  —  hustle  I " 

Jerry  felt  a  tap  upon  his  shoulder  as  he  turned  away. 
It  was  the  man-at-arms. 

"Fine  old  mould  for  that  tale!"  he  muttered  en- 
viously. "  You  can't  go  wrong.  It's  all  there  —  blood, 
bones,  dialect  and  all!  Mutiny  On  the  High  Seas. 
Old  favourite  o'  mine."  He  winked  warningly.  "  Bet- 
ter use  it!" 

Jerry  laughed  gayly  as  he  folded  up  his  copy  paper 
and  —  hustled  was  the  word  —  down  to  Barbadoes, 
his  mind  awash  with  buccaneers,  beards,  bandannas, 
earrings,  pistols,  cutlasses,  doubloons,  and  blood- 
flecked  foam.  Years  and  years  he  had  yearned  for 
those  magic  seas.  Now,  in  a  way,  he  was  to  sail  them! 
And  he  was  to  see  their  coloured  isles!  Not  through 
the  dreaming  eyes  of  an  idyllist  ashore  —  not  even 
through  the  eyes  and  glasses  of  that  prince  of  idyllists, 
who  saw  the  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or  land,  save 
only  upon  Martinque.  He  was  to  see  them  now 
through  the  bloodshot  vision  of  a  master,  not  of  words, 


ii2   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

but  men:  one  of  those  hairy  heroes  of  the  deep,  of  the 
Spanish  main,  come  suddenly  to  life  again — Cap'n  Jack 
Smith  of  the  Schooner  Ida. 

Something  of  the  dialect  began  already  to  be  audible 
above  the  roar  of  waves  and  trolley-cars  —  a  sturdy 
speech,  flavoured  with  tobacco  juice,  and  hot  with  the 
breath  of  scorn  of  God  and  man  — as  he  put,  full  sail, 
into  Backwater  Street.  A  woman  met  him  at  the 
door.  Two  or  three  children  peered  out  around  her 
bespattered  skirts,  as  she  let  them  down,  and  wiped 
the  sea  foam  from  her  hands. 

"Well?" 

Jerry  bowed  politely. 

"May  I  see  Cap'n  Smith?" 

"Sure.  He's  out  in  the  back.  Go  straight  through 
the  hall  —  that's  right  —  right  through  the  door  ahead 
o'  you." 

It  was  a  dirty  hall,  and  it  ended  in  a  dirty  yard,  full 
of  noise  and  rubbish.  And  the  captain  was  there. 
There  was  never  any  doubt  of  that!  Stumbling 
through  the  passage,  Jerry  was  aware  of  a  high  wind, 
somewhere  beyond. 

"You  bowlegged  land-lubber! " 

And  a  plaintive  zephyr  of  a  voice  protesting. 

"You  say  what  ain't  true!" 


THE  NOW  113 

"  I  say  what  I  can  see  with  both  me  eyes  shut,  you 
—  little  ditch-digger,  you!" 

And  then  again,  the  mild  rebuke  of  a  little  man  with 
his  back  to  Jerry: 

"You  say  what  ain't  true!" 

Across  his  shirt-sleeved  shoulders,  with  their  galluses, 
Jerry  made  out  at  once,  the  buccaneer,  whose  scowling 
visage  and  hairy  breast  were  all  that  the  wildest 
dreamer  could  have  desired.  It  was  a  noble  sailor-man, 
tattooed  and  fearful  to  behold,  for  he  was  heaving  with 
his  wrath. 

"Well,  what  do  you  want?"  roared  the  hurricane. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  I'd  like  to  see  Cap'n  Smith." 

"Huh!  You  would,  would  yuh?  Well,  all  I  got 
to  say  is,  it's  lucky  for  him!"  and  the  hurricane  jerked 
out  one  tattooed  fist  in  the  direction  of  the  milder  gale. 
"  I  was  just  thinkin'  o'  takin'  a  good  close  look  at  him, 
meself!  And  maybe  I  will  yet,  when  you've  got 
through  with  him,  the  —  old  hawser!  Huh  —  hawser! 
1  guess  not.  He  ain't  no  hawser.  He's  nothin'  but 
a  bit  o'  pack  thread!" 

"Lanigan,"  said  the  little  captain,  quivering  with 
reproachfulness,  "you  say  what  ain't  so!  And  you 
know  you  say  what  ain't  so!  You  ought  to  be  ashamed 
of  yourself!" 


ii4   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Ashamed,  is  it?  Yes,  I  ought  to  be  ashamed!  I 
ought  to  be  ashamed  o'  standin'  here  arguin'  with  the 
likes  o'  you  —  you  little  spindle-shanked  nanny- 
goat  ! " 

"You  heard  what  he  said!"  the  captain  cried,  turn- 
ing to  Jeremy  with  an  appealing  gesture,  and  a  coun- 
tenance, soft-bearded  as  a  lamb,  and  pale  with  horror. 
"You  heard  what  he  said!"  And  then,  facing  the 
hurricane  again,  the  little  gale  rose  shrilly  to  the  occa- 
sion. "For  two  cents  I'd  have  you  arrested!  I 
would!  You  haven't  got  no  more  sense  —  you  haven't 
got  no  more  sense " 

It  was  a  soprano  crescendo,  while  the  captain,  stand- 
ing a-tiptoe,  shook  his  forefinger  at  the  mutineer,  and 
gasped  for  words  to  express  the  heights  and  depths  of 
his  emotion. 

"  You  haven't  got  no  more  sense  than  an  old  empty 
tomato  can  !  No  sir!  " 

And  turning  to  Jeremy  again,  his  blue  eyes  filled 
with  tears. 

Meanwhile,  Lanigan,  breathing  smoke  and  flames, 
had  retired  to  his  own  back  door,  where  he  continued, 
from  time  to  time,  to  deliver  himself  of  a  soliloquy  for 
the  benefit  of  all  concerned. 

"The  old  penny-whistle!     Did  ye  hear  him  pipe  at 


THE  NOW  115 

me?  '  No  more  sense  than  an  old  tomato  can ! '  Him  a 
captain!  Why,  he  ain't  fit  to  sail  a  wash-toob!" 

"  You  heard  him!"  Captain  Smith  was  saying  to 
Jeremy,  as  they  went  inside.  "Why,  I  never  was 
talked  to  like  that  in  all  my  life!  Never!  And  I've 
been  in  rough  places  too.  And  seen  rough  men. 
Drunken  men!  But  none  like  him!  Why,  he  ain't 
fit  to  have  around!" 

"What  was  the  trouble?"  Jeremy  inquired,  striving 
to  imagine  how  that  other  mutiny  had  been  quelled, 
on  the  high  seas. 

"Why,  I  was  standing  right  there,  and  I  says  to  him, 
I  says,  '  I  think  we're  a-goin'  to  have  rain.'  Just  like 
that!  And  says  he,  'No,'  says  he,  'we  ain't!'  Well, 
/  shut  up.  I  wasn't  a-goin'  to  get  into  no  argument. 
For,  if  there's  anything  I  hate,  it's  to  have  any  un- 
pleasantness around.  I  never  did  like  it,  and  I  never 
will.  I  pay  my  bills,  and  never  interfere  with  nobody, 
nohow  —  never.  And  why  he  should  up  and  abuse  a 
peaceable " 

"/  thought  he  was  one  of  the  mutineers,"  Jerry  in- 
terposed. 

"The  what?" 

"  Mutineers." 

"Him!    Why,  he's  nothin'  but  a  bill-poster." 


n6  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Well,  captain,  would  you  mind  telling  me — I'm 
from  the  Bulletin  —  about  the  mutiny?" 

"The  w-what?" 

"The  mutiny  on  the  Ida.  You're  just  in  from  Bar- 
badoes,  I  hear." 

"Yes,  but  there  wasn't  no  mutiny!  We  never  have 
no  mutiny  on  the  Ida  —  do  we,  Ida?" 

"Well,  I  should  say  not ! "  came  a  healthy  bass  voice 
from  the  wash-tub  just  within.  It  startled  Jeremy. 
He  had  heard  it  before;  but  after  the  events  which  had 
intervened,  and  owing  to  its  suddenness,  and  a  new  and 
surprising  depth  and  volume  —  awakened,  doubtless, 
by  the  very  notion  of  a  mutiny  —  it  gave  him  a  strange 
sensation,  as  if,  in  some  mysterious  way,  it  was  really  the 
captain  who  was  rubbing  clothes,  while  he  talked  to  I  da. 

"It  must  have  been  a  rumour!"  said  the  tub. 

"Well,  yes,  I  suppose  it  was,"  the  captain  —  if  he 
was  the  captain  —  agreed.  "  I  suppose  it  was.  But 
the  strange  part  is  that  the  Bulletin  is  always  a-hearin' 
about  our  havin'  a  mutiny  on  the  Ida  !  I  don't  under- 
stand it,  at  all.  Why,  you're  the  third  young  man  from 
the  Bulletin  as  has  asked  me  that  question.  Yes,  sir. 
Why  only  last  spring  there  was  a  feller  here,  and  be 
was  from  the  Bulletin;  nice  young  feller;  too,  and  we 
told  him  we  never  had  no  mutiny  on  the  Ida  ever.  And 


THE  NOW  117 

sir,  that  feller  went  back  an'  wrote  us  up  —  both  of 
us  —  somethin'  terrible!  You'd  a-thought  that  we 
was  pirates!" 

There  was  a  suspicious  sound  within,  and  Ida  — 
unless  it  really  was  the  captain  —  darkened  the  door- 
way, and  wiped  her  hands  of  foam. 

"I  hope  you're  not  that  kind  o'  young  feller!"  was 
her  greeting.  And  there  was  something  in  the  tone 
of  it,  or  rather  in  the  undertone,  of  it,  that  sounded  so 
familiar  Jerry  wondered  if  she  might  not  be  the  bill- 
poster's sister.  At  any  rate  there  were  wind-clouds  and 
other  evidences  that  a  storm  was  brewing;  and  the 
little  captain,  having  a  weather  eye  for  all  unpleasant- 
ness, as  he  had  said,  hastened  to  intervene. 

"Oh,  my,  no!"  he  said  anxiously,  and  for  the  first 
time  Jeremy  began  to  have  a  fellow  feeling  for  the 
mariner  of  such  uncertain  seas ;  "oh,  dear,  no !  He's  not 
that  kind  of  a  young  feller.  He  doesn't  look  it." 

"Neither  did  the  other  feller  look  it!"  was  the  grim 
response,  so  that  Jerry  thought  it  prudent  to  reassure 
them, 

"  Don't  worry,"  he  entreated,  pledging  his  knightly 
word.  "You're  safe  with  me.  Perfectly  safe!  Both 
of  you!" 

"Huh!" 


n8  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Jerry  could  have  sworn,  now,  that  she  was  a  sister, 
or  at  least  a  relative  of  the  bill-poster.  That  she  was 
the  captain  there  could  be  no  longer  any  slightest 
doubt! 

"You  see,"  it  was  explained  to  him,  "there's  no  one 
on  the  Ida,  ever,  except  jest  us.  Jest  ourselves.  Yes, 
sir,  it's  jest  as  nice  a  little  quiet  family  affair  as  you 
could  wish  to  see,  the  whole  kit  and  caboodle  of  us, 
big  and  little,  including  two  pretty  fair-sized  boys  as 
can  sail  with  the  best  of  'em,  if  I  do  say  it.  Yes,  sir. 
Oh,  we  have  a  gale  now  and  then — but  nothin' 
human.  Nothin'  human  ever  happens.  No,  sir. 
But  with  her  there  —  well " 

"You  can  see,  young  feller,"  the  captain  of  the  Ida 
interposed,  "that  there  couldn't  never  be  no  mutiny, 
nohow!  Y 'understand?" 

"Perfectly!" 

Jeremy  bowed,  and  at  the  same  time  backed  dis- 
creetly through  those  outer  portals  into  the  safer, 
sunnier,  more  heroic  Now. 

"/understand!" 


V! 

LARK  FLIGHTS 

IT  WAS  a  relief,  each  evening,  to  look  into  Barbara's 
homelike  face,  to  hear  her  voice  as  she  recounted 
her  mild  adventures,  or  to  watch  the  lights  and 
shadows  in  her  eyes  as  she  listened  to  his  own  more 
vivid  chronicles  of  that  living  maelstrom  in  which 
they  had  been  whirled.  Often,  after  dinner,  they 
walked  together,  or  went  to  plays,  viewing  them  from 
lofty,  inexpensive  vantages,  so  that  they  knew  in  time, 
as  Barbara  declared,  the  tops  of  most  of  the  celebrated 
actors  and  actresses  of  their  day.  Or,  as  Jerry  put  it, 
they  had  of  dramatic  art  a  barber's  point  of  view. 
However  that  may  have  been,  they  had  the  eyes  to 
see  through  the  head  to  the  very  heart  of  things;  and 
these  emotional  diversions,  with  their  varied  pageantry 
of  joy  and  sorrow,  gave  them  opportunities  to  weep 
and  laugh  together  —  privileges  of  intimacy  that  the 
ordinary  humdrum  course  of  things  could  not  have 
granted  them  so  lavishly,  with  such  swift  and  subtle 
disclosures  and  conclusions. 
119 


120  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

One  midnight  as  they  returned,  sad  and  silent,  from 
the  theatre,  with  their  eyes  upon  the  slimy  pavement 
underfoot,  rather  than  on  the  long  perspective  of 
shining  street  lamps  that  were  quite  as  true  to  life, 
Barbara  sighed: 

"Oh,  dear!  I  wish  we  hadn't  gone.  Such  things 
are,  of  course.  But  a  play  like  that  leaves  you  with 
a  false  suggestion  —  that  its  story  is  inevitable.  For 
all  of  us.  And  that  isn't  true." 

"Still,  I'm  not  sorry  that  we  went,"  Jeremy  made 
answer,  out  of  his  own  dark  musings.  "It  makes 
some  things  —  you,  for  example  —  so  much  more  — 
so  much  more  .  .  .  exquisite." 

There  was  really  nothing  for  Barbara  to  say,  so  she 
said  nothing  —  wondering  if  she  ought  to  be  certain 
that  she  had  heard  aright.  But,  from  that  instant, 
the  play  was  no  longer  of  the  slightest  consequence. 
Life,  after  all,  was  so  much  more  memorable,  so  much 
more  thrilling  even,  than  art  could  be.  She  forgot 
the  pavement;  even  the  street-lamps  were  a  little  in- 
adequate to  express  the  hopefulness  of  life;  and,  before 
she  was  aware  of  it,  she  found  herself  calling  his  at- 
tention to  the  splendour  of  a  certain  particularly  extra- 
ordinary star. 

And  it  was  thus,  star  by  star,  that  their  sky  bright- 


LARK  FLIGHTS  121 

ened.  It  was  not  a  sudden  illumination.  It  was  not 
fireworks.  It  was  a  gradual  and  steadfast  revelation 
of  the  shadowy  wo  Id,  in  which  they  found  themselves 
oftener  and  oftener  together,  as  a  place  of  the  most 
astounding  and  mysterious  beauty,  when  one  came  to 
look  at  it.  When  one  trusted  one's  own  eyes,  rather 
than  another's.  But  it  did  not  burst  suddenly  upon 
the  enraptured  vision.  It  was  the  vision  that  grew 
clearer,  first;  and  then,  star  by  star,  the  ancient  love- 
liness was  disclosed  to  them. 

Love,  therefore,  had  no  single  splendid  scene  of 
declaration  and  surrender,  as  the  books  and  plays 
would  lead  one  to  suppose.  It  is  the  easy  way  to  tell 
what  never  yet  has  been  caught  in  words.  Love  was 
at  first,  for  them,  no  more  than  a  pleasant  conscious- 
ness of  one  another.  The  right  to  speak  —  to  say 
those  things  at  which  a  glamour  stole  upon  the  world, 
all  unforeseen  —  was  never  asked  for,  never  granted 
or  denied.  The  right  to  count  upon  each  other's 
vision,  each  other's  sympathy,  the  right  to  trust  each 
other's  glance,  even  when  its  glow  deepened,  each 
other's  handclasp,  even  when  it  lingered  —  these,  also, 
never  were  defined.  But  they  found  no  strangeness 
in  each  other's  arms,  at  last!  —  so  silently  the  world 
had  faded  into  the  merest  background  for  the  eternal 


122   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

legend,  and,  star  by  star,  love's  twilight  had  become 
love's  radiant  night. 

It  was  not  The  End  for  them:  for  the  idyl  of  their 
love.  It  was  only  the  beginning  of  a  new  chapter  in 
the  middle  of  the  book;  of  new  and  more  rapturous 
verse  in  a  poetry  of  life  that  neither  began  nor  ended 
for  them  there,  in  that  lyric  hour:  one  yet  more  tender 
word  in  a  confession  that,  day  by  day,  syllable  by 
syllable,  had  grown  eloquent,  and  was  still  unfinished. 
Words,  these  were,  that  are  better  imagined,  better 
remembered,  than  described.  Young  love  has  a  native 
speech  that  has  never  been  translated.  A  dialogue 
whose  fleeting  and  elusive  shadow  the  most  subtle 
art  has  never  caught,  save  only  for  an  instant  —  the 
merest  gleam  of  vision  and  remembrance  —  here  and 
there  in  that  comedy  of  our  inexperience  which  it  is 
so  easy  to  recall,  and  so  amusing  to  record.  Theocritus, 
perhaps,  or  Landor  —  but,  then,  Theocritus  must  wait 
a  thousand  years  or  so  for  an  audience  that  will  not 
laugh;  and  for  the  same  immunity  Landor  must  go 
back  his  thousand,  and  set  his  lovers  in  the  leafy  refuge 
of  antiquity.  From  first  to  last,  art  but  burlesques  or 
over-draws,  or  over-colours,  or  at  best  must  symbolize"; 
what  comes  and  vanishes  so  secretly  as  to  make  one 
wonder  if  one  saw,  or  only  dreamed  of  seeing.  It  is 


LARK  FLIGHTS  123 

easy  to  doubt  what  one  watches  for  in  vain;  and  what 
never  comes  again,  one  soon  forgets. 


Where  all  this  happened,  it  is  hard  to  say.  The 
great  world  smoked  and  simmered,  and,  dragon-fashion, 
lay  in  wait  for  them.  They  were  nowhere  to  be  seen ! 

Doubtless  if  one  had  known  where  to  look  —  but 
that  also  is  so  soon  forgotten.  Where  is  it  that  lovers 
pledge  their  vows?  From  whence  do  they  return  with 
so  strange  a  light  upon  their  faces?  One  sees  them 
going,  and  anon  one  sees  them  coming  back  —  but 
meanwhile? 

The  Park?  Oh,  no.  Nor  in  the  country;  nor  on  the 
river;  nor  in  the  shadows  of  deserted  streets.  One 
meets  them  in  all  these  places,  but  they  are  always 
on  their  way  —  always  going,  or  returning;  never  there. 
Jeremy  and  Barbara  one  used  to  meet  sometimes  under 
the  pleasantest  of  circumstances;  but  their  faces  told 
you  of  still  pleasanter,  from  which  they  had  but  just 
descended,  condescended,  to  your  lower  plane;  and  to 
which,  right  willingly,  they  would  return  —  if  you 
would  be  so  kind!  How  or  whither  did  they  go  back, 
when  one  was  so  kind?  Where  is  There? 

Well,  putting  two  and  two  together  —  for  Jeremy 


124  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

and  Barbara  were  one  pair,  and  there  was  another  — 
it  is  not  so  difficult  to  say.  Jeremy,  first  and  last, 
confided  a  good  deal  while  he  was  here;  and  still  his 
manuscripts,  those  tell-tale  travellers  that  were  always 
coming  home,  like  prodigals,  to  be  refreshed,  are  wit- 
nesses to  forgotten  mysteries.  They  tell  of  a  place 
where  dreamers,  strangers,  or  call  them  what  you  will, 
armed  with  high  thoughts  of  life,  but  encountering  on 
every  hand  earth's  low  realities,  may  turn  for  refuge, 
and  find  sanctuary  for  their  wounded  souls.  "The 
Sky  of  Love"  is  the  title  of  one  of  them.  "Lark 
Flights"  is  another.  Certainly  it  is  only  from  some  sky, 
and  only  in  a  rapturous  soaring,  that  the  earth  can 
ever  seem  so  low  and  far  and  insignificant  as  it  appears 
to  lovers'  eyes.  And  in  love,  life's  order  is  inverted : 
heaven  first,  earth  afterward. 

Earth  afterward!  That  is  the  sadness  in  the  song. 
It  is  the  refrain  of  love.  Over  and  over,  it  appears, 
Jeremy  and  Barbara  came  back  to  it,  and  always  with 
a  sigh.  Ways  and  Means  —  that  was  the  hard,  low 
ground  to  which  they  always  fluttered  down  from 
happier  things.  Yet  even  on  the  earth  again,  some- 
thing of  that  upper  light  descended  with  them.  Some- 
thing of  that  higher  freedom  nerved  their  hopes.  Earth 
always  is  a  little  heavenly  while  love  endures,  as  they 


LARK  FLIGHTS  125 

always  found  when  they  dropped  to  it  again,  out  of 
their  clouds  and  starlight ;  and  this  was  that  romantic, 
that  heroic  Now,  some  gleams  of  which  Jerry  had 
discerned,  before  he  wakened  to  their  heavenly  origin. 

Earth  afterward  —  but  together  they  would  manage 
it.  With  Barbara,  Jeremy  predicted,  his  backward 
and  obstructed  life  would  flower  in  a  very  springtime 
of  efficiency!  It  had  but  waited  for  this  month  of  love. 
To  be  precise,  and  practical,  twenty  dollars  say  a  week, 
—  not  an  improbable  income  for  a  man  inspired  — 
would  be  sufficient  for  two  idealists. 

Barbara  agreed. 

What  had  been  earned  before,  would  be  earned 
again ! 

That  also  was  unanswerable. 

And  if  a  man  with  a  sweetheart  could  earn  twenty 
dollars,  a  man  with  a  wife! 

It  is  an  old  argument,  and,  like  the  everlasting  hills, 
has  never  been  refuted  —  in  love. 

And  if  the  wife  were  Barbara  ! 

Well,  as  to  that,  modesty  on  the  one  hand,  and  awe 
upon  the  other,  prevented  any  calculations.  And  the 
logic  of  the  thing  was  so  irresistible,  and  so  practical 
withal.  And  proved  so  conclusively  that  the  divine 
was  the  expedient  as  well! 


126  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Thus,  with  Cupid  in  the  chair,  the  Ways  and  Means 
Committee  made  short,  sweet  work  of  its  budgets  and 
appropriations,  and  was  adjourned.  But  when  they 
attempted  to  go  back  —  so  the  story  goes  —  when  they 
attempted  to  return,  that  evening,  whence  they  had 
come  —  a  clock  struck  eleven.  Straightway,  around 
the  corner,  out  of  the  forgotten  world,  came  the 
Proprieties  —  ghostly  policeman,  utterly  heartless,  and 
armed  with  clubs. 

"Move  on!" 

And  when  they  lingered,  only  a  moment  or  two  at 
most,  the  clock  struck  twelve! 

"Move,  I  say!" 

"Jerry  dear,  I  think  we  ought." 

And  yet  again 

"Jerry,  darling,  we  really  must!  .  .  .  What  are 
those  lovely  lights  across  the  river?" 

"Hoboken." 

They  had  fallen  indeed!  Earth  afterward  —  Hobo- 
ken!  There  is  no  such  word  above! 

in 

Below,  they  opened  bank  accounts.  It  is  easier 
said  than  done;  but  they  did  it,  to  be  really  practical. 
And  Jeremy  kept  sending  off  that  Toodlums  novel 


LARK  FLIGHTS  127 

which  was  always  coming  back;  and  scribbling  others 
— "Lark  Flights,"  doubtless,  and  "The  Sky  of  Love" 
-^  which  bear  no  sign  that  they  were  ever  published. 

Their  return  was  Barbara's  cue.     Enter  Love. 

"  Dearheart,  you  must  take  it  in  the  spirit  of  adven- 
ture." 

"I  do  take  it  in  the  spirit  of  adventure,  but" —  here 
Jeremy  would  toss  the  manuscript  into  an  imaginary 
fire,  from  which  Love  would  rescue  it  —  "the  same  old 
dragon  grows  monotonous. " 

"  I  know  —  but  if  you  could  see  what  /  see!" 

He  would  smile  at  that.  It  was  so  charming,  that 
second-sight  of  hers!  which  never  failed  her,  never 
grew  dim,  even  when  the  mists  closed  in  about  them, 
shutting  out  every  other  view. 

"Ah,  yes;  I  know  what  you  see." 

"What  do  I  see?" 

"You  see  a  ship!" 

"Yes,"  Barbara,  as  calmly  as  the  last  time,  would 
reply.  "I  do.  I  see  a  ship." 

"And  is  it,"  he  would  ask,  "the  —  the  same  old 
ship?" 

But  Barbara,  in  seeing  things,  was  often  deaf. 

"I  do  see  it! "she  would  insist,  indignantly.  "It's 
in  the  offing,  I  think  you  call  it,  don't  you?" 


128  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"/  call  it  a  mirage,"  he  said.  "They  don't  arrive, 
somehow,  those  ships  of  ours!" 

"One  did!" 

There  was  never  any  answering  that.  One  dream, 
indeed,  had  floated  in  to  them,  a  fair  reality  with  great 
white  wings  of  hope;  and  she  had  only  to  remind  him 
of  it  and  its  merchandise,  only  to  reproach  him  gently 
with  the  shame  of  his  forgetfulness,  to  make  him  see 
how  immaterial  all  riches  were,  besides.  Let  no  one 
laugh;  it  would  be  a  sad  confession.  Young  love  alone 
knows  such  fine  scorn  of  things  deemed  indispen- 
sable —  heaven  first.  Old  love  —  earth  afterward  — 
grows  prudent;  prefers  snug  havens.  But  snug  havens 
mean  deserted  wharves;  and  to  laugh  at  young  love 
is  to  laugh  at  the  spirit  of  adventure,  and  the  romance 
and  rapture  of  the  sea. 

On  land,  that  same  old  dragon  of  Jeremy's  complaint 
now  found  two  adversaries  where  before  it  had  en- 
countered one.  In  spite  of  its  proximity,  they  went 
on  planning.  They  planned  a  home  under  its  very 
nose;  for  they  would  place  it  safely  in  the  magic  circle 
of  their  dreams  —  which  must  come  true,  they  were 
so  beautiful.  It  is  a  fair  philosophy,  and  it  has  the 
merit  of  being  true;  for  so  long  as  one  believes  it,  it 
never  fails.  Those  who  lose  faith  in  it,  lose  sight  also. 


LARK  FLIGHTS  129 

Lose  sight  of  that  other,  that  Epic  life,  which  is  now 
and  here,  to-day  as  surely  as  ever  it  was  yesterday 
and  will  be  to-morrow,  with  its  ships  in  the  offing, 
and  its  haunted  wood,  where  Jeremy  had  wandered  up 
and  down  alone.  For  it  was  there  —  it  was  not  in 
New  York  at  all  —  that  Jeremy  had  fought  those  soli- 
tary battles  with  that  ancient  dragon  of  despair. 
There,  in  that  same  old  shadowy  forest  where  Arthur's 
men  performed  their  prodigies  centuries  before,  he  had 
battled  from  dawn  till  nightfall,  and  been  wounded  unto 
death;  and  now,  at  last,  as  in  those  elder  legends,  he 
had  awakened  to  the  consciousness  of  soft  hands  bind- 
ing up  his  bruised  and  aching  body,  and  of  pitying  eyes 
restoring  his  dejected  soul  to  life  again. 

Ask  love  if  poetry  is  dead!  Young  love,  not  old.  It 
is  the  old  which  is  mad.  Its  shield  and  lance  are  on  the 
dusty  wall,  but  it  denies  as  myth  what  it  has  lived  as 
history,  and  warms  its  hands  over  the  embers  of  a  fire 
whose  kindling  it  has  utterly  forgot.  Ask  youth  what 
youth  is.  It,  only,  knows;  but  alas!  —  is  dumb. 

Jeremy  and  Barbara,  living  romance,  could  never 
find  the  words  for  it.  Feeling  about  them  that  haunted 
forest,  braving  its  perils,  and  resting  in  its  shadowy 
glades,  they  could  only  gaze  wistfully  into  each  other's 
eyes,  and  wonder.  How  it  had  come  to  pass  that  they 


130  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

were  there!  How  he  had  happened  to  be  riding  by  that 
day!  Wloicb  day!  Alas!  already  they  were  beginning 

to  forget what  they  had  never  known  till  it  was 

over! 

It  is  the  way  with  dreams.  Knight  that  he  was,  and 
long  as  he  had  watched  and  waited  for  Opportunity, 
he  did  not  know,  nor  could  she  tell,  the  place  or  hour  in 
which  that  dream  of  chivalry  had  come  true. 

But  he  had  her  word  for  it,  that,  somehow,  some- 
where in  the  enchanted  forest,  he  had  rescued  a  lady 
from  a  lonely  tower! 

And  she  had  his  word,  that,  for  her,  if  need  be,  he 
would  slay  all  the  dragons  in  the  world! 

IV 

All  that  was  true.  But  it  was  only  the  wonder,  it 
was  not  the  rapture  of  the  dream.  The  Sea  of  Ships  and 
the  Forest  of  Dragons  were  still  of  earth,  though  an 
earth  transfigured,  it  is  true.  But  love,  it  seems,  had  a 
higher,  more  ethereal  mystery,  of  the  sky,  which 
Jeremy,  in  those  lamented  manuscripts,  was  always 
seeking  words  for.  After  all,  it  is  the  sky  that  is  love's 
native  element.  They  were  lovers  —  or  so  their  silences 
rather  than  their  words  confessed  —  not  only  in  what 
was  near  and  obvious,  but  in  what  was  far  and  mystica\. 


LARK  FLIGHTS  131 

and  could  never  be  explained.  And  only  love,  and  only 
love  when  it  is  young,  knows  ecstasies  that  spurn  the 
earth;  that  will  not  be  content  to  climb,  painfully,  to 
the  mountain  tops,  whose  exaltations  are  among  the 
snows,  but  must  mount  straight  upward  from  the 
meadows,  higher,  and  ever,  ever,  ever  higher,  in  those 
lark  flights  of  the  unfettered  spirit,  that  knows  not 
how,  nor  whither,  nor  even  why,  it  soars  and  sings. 

One  moment  she  would  be  sitting  there,  upon  the 
greensward  of  the  forest,  her  hands  about  her  knees, 
silent,  in  a  reverie  of  sunbeams.  The  next  she  would 
appear  to  him  to  fade  into  a  dream  of  tender  light,  in 
which,  transfigured  first  and  then  transformed,  she 
seemed  to  float  and  hover  like  a  bird.  Yet  was  not  a 
bird ;  even  in  love's  young  dream  she  was  not  as  mortals 
know  the  birds.  It  was  the  flight  and  soaring  that 
seemed  birdlike,  in  these  transcendent  moments  of 
their  comradeship.  It  was  that  sudden  vision  which 
lovers  know  —  only  lovers,  and  only  when  love  is 
young  —  of  the  world,  so  far,  so  small,  so  insignificant, 
down  there  below  them!  For  where  she  floated,  so  did 
he  —  free,  and  high,  and  scornful,  and  forgetful  of 
everything  in  life  except  themselves  —  leaving  behind 
them,  farther  and  farther,  that  low  green  earth  of  toil 
and  care,  which  is  only  to  be  spurned  on  wings.  This 


132   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

was  their  sky.  And  it  was  theirs,  all  of  it :  all  of  this 
pale,  blue  boundlessness  of  love,  through  which  he 
followed,  turned  and  followed,  sinking  to  her  eagerly, 
rising  to  her  wistfully,  who  was  ever  just,  just,  just 
beyond  him!  —  too  swift  and  subtle  for  his  clumsy 
flight.  And  then  —  all  in  an  instant  it  was  over.  She 
was  there  again,  seated  as  before  upon  the  greensward, 
her  hands  about  her  knees. 

That  was  the  pain  of  it  —  that  low  return.  For  to 
rapture,  wonder  even  is  an  earth-bound  thing.  And 
to  walk,  when  one  has  known,  on  wings,  the  feeling  of 
the  sky!  Homeward  the  flowers  even,  and  the  wind- 
voiced  trees,  were  now  too  near,  too  crude,  for  loveli- 
ness. The  touch  of  earth  was  clogging  to  the  feet.  The 
sound  of  words,  such  words  as  they  could  think  to 
utter,  wrought  foolish  discords  in  the  heavy  air,  and 
only  silence  had  any  melody. 

Love,  young  love,  is  the  name  for  it  —  that  rapturous 
flight  above  the  common  earth,  which  young  hearts 
spurn  together,  wing  to  wing,  yet  must  come  back  to  it 
again  —  and  find  it  sad. 


It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  they  should  tell  others 
what  they  never  could  tell  themselves,  what  defied 


LARK  FLIGHTS  133 

analysis,  and  was  so  utterly  bewildering  that  even  the 
memory  of  it  was  like  a  rosy  mist. 

"Do  you  think  I  shall  care  for  love?"  asked  one  of 
Barbara's  friends  who  as  yet  was  ignorant,  gravely 
ignorant,  of  those  famous  mysteries. 

"Oh,  my  dear!  —  Yes!" 

"But  what  makes  you  so  very  sure?" 

"Why  —  you  can't  help  it!" 

"But  suppose  I  prefer  to  help  it?" 

Barbara  was  dumb. 

"I  don't  know, "  she  said  at  last.  "I  never  thought  of 
that." 

"And  suppose  I  do  help  it?"  the  other  one  insisted. 

"Oh,  you  can't  do  that!" 

"Why  not?" 

"You  won't  have  a  chance!" 

"Why  not?" 

"You  won't  have  time!" 

"Why  not?" 

"  Because  you  won't  know  anything  about  it,  until — 
until  it  is  too  late!" 

"Why  won't  I?" 

"I  don't  know!" 

"Why  don't  you  know  ?" 

"I  don't  know  why  I  don't  know!" 


I34   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Well,  what  do  you  know?" 

Barbara  laughed. 

"Why,  I  —  I  don't  know  what  I  know!"  she  cried, 
helplessly. 

"And  is  that  love?" 

"Yes!  That's  love!"  said  the  one  who  knew.  And 
the  one  that  didn't  know  shook  her  head  doubtfully 
and  smiled. 

"Well,  Barbara  dear,"  she  said,  "I  never  met  a 
person  who  knew  so  little,  and  looked  so  much.  But 
I'll  trust  your  face  for  it." 

That  was  precisely  what  they  did  themselves.  It 
was  all  a  venture  —  a  venture  of  faith,  like  all  adventur- 
ings,  whether  of  the  earth  or  air.  Doubt  takes  no 
chances;  risks  no  heart-throb;  never  knows,  nor  dares 
to  know,  the  thrill  of  any  splendid  hazard  or  embarka- 
tion. They  had  found  Romance.  That  much,  at 
least,  must  be  conceded  to  love's  younger,  braver 
dreams.  But  they  had  found  it  in  nothing  that  was  safe 
or  sure. 

That  was  what  made  the  heart  leap!  That  was  what 
made  them  gasp,  and  laugh,  in  the  face  of  dragons,  on 
the  edge  of  the  abyss.  It  was  not  the  wonder,  it  was 
not  the  rapture  of  the  dream  —  it  was  the  risk  and 
recklessness.  Faith's  old  adventure  into  mystery  — 


LARK  FLIGHTS  135 

Romance,  whose  starlight  was  in  their  faces,  so  that 
they  shone  strangely  to  the  world  of  doubt  and  fear. 

"I  feel,"  she  told  him 

"How  do  you  feel?" 

"Why"  —  she  caught  her  breath  —  "I  feel  as  if 
anything,  anything,  might  happen  now!" 

"And  now,"  he  answered,  "we  are  ready  for  it!" 

They  were  ready,  indeed;  but  when  it  came  it  found 
them  dumb.  It  seemed  a  miracle;  perhaps  it  was. 
Perhaps  in  faith  they  had  discovered  an  eternal  law, 
with  power  even  in  that  substantial  world  around 
them. 

"Things  —  don't  —  just  —  happen!"  Barbara  said, 
when  they  could  speak. 

But  Jeremy  could  only  stare.  He  only  knew  that  it 
was  not  a  dream  which  trembled  in  his  hands. 

It  was  Forty  Dollars! 

And  in  the  offing  there  was  a  fleet  of  sails! 

"I  wrote  it  in  two  hours!"  he  said,  breathlessly. 
"How  much  would  that  be  a  month?  You  figure  it;  I 
can't  seem  to  count." 

"But,  Jerry  dear,  you  couldn't  do  it  every  two 
hours!" 

"I  could  do  it  once  a  week!" 

"Oh  —  are  you  sure?" 


136  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Yes!  —  now.  Now,  I'm  sure.  Now  I'm  sure  of 
anything  —  everything!  .  .  .  You!" 

"Oh,  Jerry,  I  —  I  think  we  ought  to  wait!" 

"  Waitl  We  will  wait  always  if  we  wait  now  —  now 
when  everything,  everything,  is  coming  true!  Why  do 
you  suppose  that  it  was  sent ! " 

"Was  it  sent?" 

"Things  don't  just  happen,"  he  reminded  her.  "Not 
things  like  this!  Things  that  we've  been  dreaming 
of!" 

They  were  both  in  tears.  She  had  shut  her  eyes  — 
his  own  were  so  convincing;  and  it  was  so  dizzy  high, 
that  precipice  on  whose  very  brink  he  was  asking  her  to 
trust  to  wings.  They  were  beautiful  wings  —  beautiful 
.  .  .  but  dreams  —  every  pinion  of  them! 

Her  heart  misgave  her.  But  it  was  the  same  heart 
that,  a  fortnight  later,  in  the  little  Chapel  of  the 
Divine  Compassion,  beat  tremulously,  stopped,  and 
beat  again;  and  then  —  without  a  tremor  of  anything 
but  faith  and  joy  —  felt  itself  lifted  into  space  and 
borne  away  upon  the  starlit  air. 


VII 
CLOUD  SHADOWS 

THERE  is  no  lovelier  quarter  of  New  York  than 
that  in  which  they  came  to  dwell;  for  while  it 
is  pleasant  to  float  upon  the  ecstasies  that  are 
the  heart  and  soul  of  all  fair  beginnings,  love  builds  its 
nest  upon  the  solid  earth.    Not  on  the  ground,  however. 
They  built  theirs  high,  under  the  eaves,  in  a  mansion 
that  even  common  eyesight  could  discern,  though  in  a 
neighbourhood  —  one  might  as  well  confess  it,  first  as 
last  —  whose  very  existence  has  been  denied. 

It  is  a  quarter  so  old-fashioned  and  exclusive  that 
not  a  real-estate  firm  in  all  the  city  ever  has  been  able 
to  get  its  hands  upon  it.  Not  a  foot  of  it  is  for  sale. 
It  is  never  in  the  advertisements.  There  are  folk  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  and  on  Riverside  Drive,  who  would  give 
half  their  fortunes  to  be  able  to  live  there.  Poor  souls, 
they  do  not  even  know  its  name! 

Jerry  used  to  slip  off  into  it  after  the  day's  work  was 
done,   and,  with   Barbara  on  his  arm,  they  would 
•37 


138    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

wander  blissfully  through  its  pleasant  thoroughfares, 
where  even  the  noises  of  city  life  are  softened  to  the 
ear.  The  drivers  of  trucks  go  softly  there;  and,  oddly 
enough,  not  by  virtue  of  any  ordinance  of  the  board  of 
aldermen,  but  through  the  sheer  love  of  not  disturbing 
folk,  who  might  have  other  things  to  think  of.  Even 
the  wagons  full  of  milk  cans  are  quite  melodious  in 
that  part  of  town,  as  they  skim  the  cobbles,  providing 
no  more  than  a  soft  accompaniment  to  conversation 
about  the  joy  of  life  and  the  beauty  of  the  world. 

And  the  residents  are  charming!  The  apple-women, 
to  cite  the  humblest  of  examples,  are  the  dearest  old 
motherly  souls  that  ever  lived.  They  would  give  you 
their  fruit,  if  you  would  let  them!  And  when  the 
policemen  are  there  at  all,  it  is  only  to  add  a  touch  of 
colour  now  and  then,  a  speck  of  blue,  here  and  there,  to 
convivial  corners  where  the  gilt  signs  glitter  in  the  sun. 
Or  they  are  there  to  pick  up  any  of  the  lovely,  happy 
little  romping  children  that  may  stumble  on  the  cross 
ings  —  sweet  little  things,  to  whom  Barbara  was 
always  calling  Jeremy's  attention,  and  pausing  to 
watch,  as  they  danced  and  sang  about  the  organ- 
grinders. 

There  was  one  place  especially  that  Jeremy  and 
Barbara  were  continually  seeking.  It  was  about  as 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  139 

large  as  a  very  large  pocket-handkerchief,  greenish, with 
a  pearl-gray  border,  and  shaded  by  two  or  three  gentle 
trees.  They  had  started  to  be  maples;  and  then,  under 
the  extraordinary  influence  of  their  surroundings,  had 
changed  their  minds,  and,  forgetting  all  about  their 
botany,  had  become  just  trees;  which  was  exceedingly 
good-humoured  of  them,  for  one  could  imagine  them 
anything,  anything  sheltering  and  whispering,  that 
one  particularly  liked.  To  Barbara  they  were  whatever 
they  might  be  to  Jeremy.  To  Jeremy  they  were 
hawthorn  trees.  Hawthorn  trees  reminded  him  of  — 
"took  him  back  so"  to  —  Toodlumshire,  where  the 
hedgerows  were  enough  to  make  one  sigh,  merely  to 
remember  them!  Ah,  well,  some  day  they  would  go 
•there.  Meanwhile,  the  hawthorns  here  were  fragrant  in 
their  way.  What  the  boughs  lacked  themselves,  a 
bakery  opposite  made  up  to  them  in  the  most  appetiz- 
ing kind  of  scented  springtime.  Indeed,  it  is  the  way  in 
that  quarter  of  the  city.  Everything  helps  everything 
else  to  be  whatever  one  has  eyes,  or  ears,  or  nose  for. 
And  to  Jeremy  and  Barbara  their  little  corner  of  the 
world  was  that  same  fair  place  which  is  always  to  be 
found,  in  town  or  country,  if  only  one  does  not  go 
alone  to  look  for  it,  and  is  fortunate  in  his  company. 
"Which  do  you  say  it  will  be?"  Jeremy  would  ask, 


140    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

as  they  would  rise  from  the  bench  under  the  hawthorns 
and  stroll  off  home  to  dinner. 

"/  say  it  will  be  tapioca  pudding.  Which  do  you 
say?" 

"  I  say  prunes." 

And  then,  if  it  were  apple-sauce,  that  would  be  one 
more  subject  of  discourse,  as  they  finished  their  repast 
and  floated  out  again  into  the  twilight,  when  the 
neighbourhood  is  always  loveliest,  and  lends  its  softly 
illumined  forms  and  colourings  to  any  imaginable  kind 
of  dream. 

Or,  if  they  preferred,  they  could  sit  upstairs  by  the 
open  window,  through  which  the  wind  and  moonlight 
came  from  the  distant  sea  and  sky,  as  sweetly  as  ever 
it  blew,  or  shone,  in  country  love-stories;  while,  from 
the  street  below,  floated  up  music  of  the  Italian  operas, 
or  ballads  of  the  seasons  before  last,  grown  a  little 
tenderer  with  time  and  distance,  now  that  the  words 
could  be  forgotten,  and  the  lilt  of  the  melody  could  be 
fitted  to  the  mood  or  reverie  of  the  passing  hour.  Or 
they  could  lean  out  across  the  sill,  their  heads  touching, 
while  they  watched  below  the  will  o'the  wisps,  the 
cabs  and  popcorn  men,  go  by;  or  above  in  the  strip 
of  heaven  those  other  lights  that  seemed  to  say  to 
them 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  141 

"It  is  the  same  up  here,  my  dears  —  nothing  but 
Love!  You  have  found  the  secret  of  the  universe." 

Well,  so  they  had.  And,  now,  if  only  they  could 
keep  it,  if  only  they  could  keep  their  eyesight,  if  only 
they  could  keep  that  tender  quarter  of  the  town  from 
growing  noisy  and  unkempt  and  altogether  low  and 
vulgar,  after  the  fashion  of  the  city,  which  is  always 
changing,  always  losing  something  that  one  loved  about 
it  once,  and  that,  missing,  one  never  has  the  heart  to 
seek,  or  the  fortune  to  find  again,  elsewhere. 

Not  that  they  questioned  it  —  the  living  Present  had 
grown  so  amiable!  As  yet  there  was  only  one  shadow 
upon  its  bliss.  Always  it  was  the  same  shadow.  Its 
form  was  the  same.  Its  meaning  was  the  same.  It 
was  like  a  letter  "S,"only  it  was  not  half  so  graceful; 
for,  through  its  curves,  two  lines,  vertical  and  parallel, 
made  of  it  that  warning  and  familiar  symbol  of  man's 
slavery,  which,  being  interpreted,  bids  him  look  down, 
not  up  for  star-dust ;  for  that  toll  which  his  life  —  yes, 
even  his  love  —  must  pay,  earth-gold  for  gold-of- 
heaven,  gleam  for  gleam. 


It  was  unfortunate  that  the  other  people  in  the 
boarding-house  should  have  elected  to  live  in  a  neigh- 


142    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

bourhood  with  which  they  had  so  little  sympathy,  and 
for  which  they  were  so  utterly  unfitted  by  spiritual 
and  esthetic  gifts.  None  of  them  realized  its  charm. 
None  saw  its  picturesque  forms,  or  mellow  colourings. 
They  found  it,  one  regrets  to  say,  intolerably  deafening, 
and  dirty,  and  dilapidated;  and  the  lovely  old  house 
itself  a  gloomy  hole  full  of  rats  and  things,  and  frowzy, 
and  musty,  and  altogether  uninhabitable  for  persons 
of  refinement  like  themselves.  Yet  they  stayed  on. 
The  Major  stayed  —  that  is  to  say,  the  portly  little 
man  who  looked  as  if  he  might  have  been  a  major,  if 
he  had  ever  wanted  to  be  one;  but,  who,  like  most  of 
the  others  of  the  company,  was  now  employed  some- 
where, doing  something,  somehow,  for  somebody. 
And  the  two  or  three  assorted  couples,  for  all  the  world 
like  so  many  pairs  of  old  shoes,  limp  and  lumpy,  run 
down  at  the  heels,  and  with  their  tops  askew  —  they 
stayed.  And  Miss  Leeds,  she  stayed,  taking  her 
tablets,  and,  as  was  only  becoming  to  one  in  her  condi- 
tion of  life,  sitting  up  stiffly  and  speaking  with  reserve 
to  persons  who  had  so  recently  been  married.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  were  others  who  remained,  with 
an  eye  for  the  comedy,  if  not  for  the  poetry  of  the 
place.  The  two  dear,  jaunty,  bright-faced  Western 
girls  of  the  dramatic  school,  for  example,  who  were  so 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  143 

tremendously  in  earnest,  and  in  love  with  life,  with 
everything  and  everybody,  but  with  Jeremy  and 
Barbara  in  particular;  and  who  made  them  forget  the 
rest,  whom  they  only  bumped  against,  now  and  again, 
in  the  dim  hallways,  or  saw  —  or  rather  felt  than  saw  — 
as  a  more  or  less  vague  and  variegated  hodge-podge  of 
humanity,  at  the  farther  tables  in  the  basement  dining- 
room. 

It  may  have  been  that  envy  had  somewhat  to  do 
with  the  general  aloofness  and  tone  of  bitterness  and 
discontent.  Jeremy  and  Barbara,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, had  the  best  room  in  the  house;  though,  oddly 
enough,  at  the  very  top  of  it,  the  top  floor  front.  It 
was  not  the  most  expensive  lodging,  it  is  true;  but  it 
had  the  best  air,  and  the  only  view  of  life  worth  men- 
tioning, the  sunniest  and  starriest  outlook  upon  the 
world;  and  what  was  more,  the  fairest  in-look,  a 
springlike  atmosphere  pervading  it,  so  that  a  bloom  lay 
over  Barbara's  trinkets  and  Jerry's  books.  They  often 
remarked  upon  the  picture  that  it  made,  of  homely 
cheerfulness  and  sweet  seclusion.  It  gave  them,  more- 
over, a  sense  of  living  in  a  tower,  or  a  dove-cote,  so  to 
speak,  right  at  the  top  of  things;  and  so  serenely  and 
sky-fully  above  them  that  they  did  not  mind  the 
flights  of  stairs,  which  Jerry  mounted,  three  steps  at 


144    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

once,  but  Barbara  —  as  time  went  by  —  more  and 
more  slowly. 

HI 

Love,  it  seemed,  however,  it  might  vaunt  its  present, 
and  forget  its  past,  must  reckon  always  with  the 
future.  Suddenly,  above  the  far  horizon,  a  cloud  had 
risen.  Dimming  the  brightness,  but  deepening  the  awe 
and  strangeness  of  that  forward  view,  it  come  —  in- 
evitable, nearer  with  each  passing  day,  and  with  other 
clouds  attendant  in  its  train;  and  gathering  in  its  swift 
approach,  all  the  doubtfulness,  all  the  dread  and 
menace  of  the  unknown,  into  its  hovering  and  solemn 
beauty. 

Watching  and  waiting,  love's  voice  was  hushed. 
They  had  come  to  those  silent  days  in  which  love 
pauses  to  consider;  in  which  it  sees  what,  according 
to  its  eyes,  and  light,  is  for  better  or  for  worse.  In 
valleys  of  the  shadow  romance  pales  swiftly  to  a 
ghostly  memory  of  the  starlit  air;  or  else,  in  that 
insight  concerning  which  mankind  has  never  been 
agreed,  whether  it  be  of  vision  or  of  blindness,  the 
spirit  of  adventure  is  seen  to  be  an  angel  not  of  rapture 
merely,  nor  of  flight,  but  of  tears  also,  and  vigils,  and 
folded  wings. 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  145 

Which  it  was  to  be  for  them  —  a  memory,  or  an 
eternal  presence  —  no  one  could  foretell.  Not  even 
Jeremy  of  the  knightly  vows!  —  with  his  manuscripts 
coming  back,  just  as  of  old,  and  as  if  there  were  no 
dream  at  stake,  nor  need  at  hand.  Nor  even  Barbara 
of  the  childlike  faith  in  knights  and  angels,  with  that 
mortal  heaviness  dulling  the  sense  of  spiritual  realities. 
But  they  could  trust  dumbly;  and  there  was  reassur- 
ance in  the  light  of  secret-sharing  smiles  and  glances,  or 
in  the  pressure  of  a  hand,  as  they  sat  together,  silently, 
under  the  hawthorn  trees,  watching  that  little  coloured 
world  of  theirs,  still  lovely,  even  with  the  shadows  of 
those  clouds  upon  it. 

Indeed,  sometimes,  it  had  a  strange  new  charm  that 
they  had  never  known;  and  which  took  them  unawares, 
clutching  at  their  throats,  and  stifling  their  laughter  at 
its  passing  comedy.  As  if,  somehow,  that  rippling  sur- 
face had  been  stilled,  ^and  they  had  seen,  beneath,  the 
hidden  springs  —  that  under-drama,  of  motive  and  of 
aspiration;  the  poetry  of  life  which  finds  no  utterance 
but  prose;  those  dreams  that  do  not  die,  as  we  imagine, 
but  live,  on  and  on,  unguessed,  in  a  helpless  poverty, 
whose  rags  and  hunger  are  not  of  the  body,  but  the  soul. 

"What  I  used  to  laugh  at,"  Barbara  confessed, 
"makes  me  want  to  cry.  All  the  foolish  things,  and 


146    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

the  faded  things,  and  the  broken  and  the  crooked 
things,  and  the  things  with  humps!  But  most  of  all," 
she  said,  more  thoughtfully,  "most  of  all,  the  things 
that  try  so  hard  to  smile,  and  only  —  crack  them- 
selves!" 

"1  suppose,"  she  added,  "it's  because  we  never 
guess  other  people's  secrets,  till  we  have  secrets  of  our 
own." 

She  was  very  tender  with  Miss  Leeds,  and  the  Major 
and  those  old  pairs  of  boarding-house  shoes  that,  once 
upon  a  time,  she  reminded  Jeremy,  were  bright  and  new. 

"Think,"  she  said  to  him,  "of  all  the  romance  that 
has  been  forgotten  —  lost,  somehow.  .  .  .  Oh,  my 
dear!" 

It  so  appalled  her  that  she  turned  quite  pale. 

"  But  why  are  you  afraid?"  he  asked. 

"I  don't  know,"  was  her  reply,  "unless  .  .  . 
unless  it's  because  we  might  turn  out  to  be  so " 

"So  what?" 

And  she  answered,  sorrowfully: 

"So  very  human,  after  all!" 

IV 

It  was  possible,  of  course;  but  hardly  likely,  Jerry 
thought,  so  long  as  she  could  keep  those  secret-guessing 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  147 

eyes  of  hers,  and  a  heart  so  tender  and  compassionate. 
There  was  one  word  that  the  lovers  in  the  old  books 
used  to  use,  that  he  had  come  to  think  half-true  of  her, 
at  least.  And  never,  he  told  her,  could  she  be  quite 
human,  so  long  as  she  was  half  an  angel. 

As  for  his  own  eyesight,  his  own  vision  of  that 
environment  in  which  their  love  had  built  its  nest, 
high  up,  under  the  eaves,  it  was  yet  too  soon  to  say 
that  any  of  its  romance  had  faded.  Shadows  there 
were,  of  gathering  clouds.  But,  after  all,  they  only 
meant  a  little  more  determined  and  undaunted  striving 
for  life's  prizes;  a  little  graver  contemplation  of  life's 
mysteries;  and  faith — that  was  the  essential  thing. 
Not  once  and  for  all,  had  they  risked  and  ventured. 
Always,  now,  over  and  over,  again  and  yet  again,  they 
must  do  the  same.  They  must  stop  their  ears,  and 
shut  their  eyes,  and,  hand  in  hand,  every  day,  entrust 
themselves  to  the  unseen  mercies  of  the  air.  To  the 
unknown:  seemingly  so  empty,  but  in  reality,  while 
faith  endured,  so  safe  and  radiant  with  angels'  wings. 

And  yet 

That  Toodlums  story  was  always  coming  back  — 
and  was  laid  away.  And  those  other  new  ones,  for 
whose  sure  success  that  one  only  little  published  tale 
had  been  the  pledge  —  Barbara's  wedding  ring,  they 


148   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

called  it;  those  new  visions,  which  he  wrote  evenings, 
seated  at  the  only  table  in  the  room,  and  looking  up  at 
her  between  the  lines,  and  when  he  laid  each  finished 
page  among  her  sewing  —  these,  too,  showed  that 
same  inevitable  and  mocking  tendency  to  return. 

Truth  to  tell,  they  dealt  with  that  quarter  of  the  city 
which  the  editors,  like  the  real-estate  men,  had  for- 
gotten, if  they  ever  knew  it.  No  such  kindly  apple- 
women  ever  had  existed,  they  told  each  other;  nor  such 
fragrant  hawthorns  in  the  middle  of  the  smoky  town; 
nor  any  such  melodious  milk  carts,  skimming  the 
cobbles.  And  when  at  last,  driven  to  desperation, 
Jeremy  sent  them  the  story  of  two  young  married  folk, 
nesting  high  up,  under  the  eaves;  and  of  what  they 
saw  out  of  their  lofty,  geranium-scented  window; 
and  of  what  they  thought,  and  of  how  it  all  happened 
on  fifteen  dollars,  more  or  less,  a  week  —  one  wise 
young  editor,  breaking  the  mysterious  silence  in 
which  these  things  are  settled  for  better  or  for  worse, 
wrote  to  Jeremy,  suggesting  in  a  kindly,  paternal  way, 
that  if  he  would  go,  limself,  and  get  married,  and  try 
living  up  under  the  eaves,  with  a  wife  and  a  geranium, 
and  fifteen  dollars,  more  or  less,  a  week,  he  would 
doubtless  understand  why  his  rosy  little  idyl  had  been 
unavailable! 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  149 

It  was  the  only  time  that  Barbara  ever  heard  Jerry 
swear  —  a  mild  oath,  with  which  the  recording  angel 
promptly  debited  the  account  of  the  wise  young 
editor. 

"Jerry,  dear!"  was  Barbara's  comment. 

"Well,"  he  answered,  and  his  face  was  wonderful 
to  behold,  "I  know  what  they  want,  and  I'm  going  to 
give  it  to  them!" 

Prudently,  Barbara  removed  the  pins  from  her 
mouth  before  she  asked  him, 

"What?" 

"I'm  going  to  write  a  story,"  Jeremy  declared, 
calmly,  and  it  was  a  splendid  calm!  as  if,  at  last,  the 
long-sought  secret  was  in  the  hollow  of  his  fist,  with 
which  he  emphasized  his  smashing  plot.  "I'm  going 
to  write  a  story  in  which  a  man,  living  up  under  the 
eaves  of  an  old  boarding-house,  comes  home  one  night, 
and  discovers  that  his  wife  has  been  unfaithful " 

"Why,  Jerry!" 

"  Yes!  He  comes  home,  and  he  rears  and  he  tears, 
and  he  throws  the  geranium  out  of  the  window,  and 
goes  away,  before  she  has  a  chance  to  explain  that  the 
man  he  had  seen  her  with  was  her  poor,  dear,  long-lost, 
only  brother,  who  had  just  been  released  from  the 
penitentiary,  where  he  had  been  confined  ten  monstrous 


150  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

mortal  years  for  a  crime  of  which  he  was  as  innocent  as 
a  babe  unborn!" 

"Jerry!" 

"Listen!  Time  goes  by.  Years.  And  one  day, 
when  he's  old,  and  rich,  and  sour  as  a  crab,  he  chances 
to  be  passing  across  the  street  —  it  was  the  very  street 
where  he  had  lived  so  happily  in  those  dear,  dead  days, 
before  his  geranium  and  his  heart  were  broken  —  and 
as  he  toddles  out  into  the  very  middle  of  the  traffic, 
clang  !  clang!  round  the  corner  comes  Fire  Engine  23. 
There  is  a  hoarse  cry!  Man  leaps  from  the  curb,  and, 
at  a  single  bound,  jerks  the  old  party  from  the  horse's 
hoofs,  just  in  time  to  be  struck  himself!  And  as  he 
falls,  and  lies  there,  dying,  in  the  muck  and  gore, 
whom  should  his  upturned  face  disclose  but " 

"Jerry!   Who?" 

He  looked  at  her  suspiciously  —  almost  reproach- 
fully, she  thought  —  as  he  continued: 

"Why,  the  brother,  of  course.  Who  else  could  it 
have  been?  The  one  conceivable  human  being  who 
could  possibly  have  been  there,  of  all  the  spots  on 
earth  —  then,  of  all  the  moments  in  eternity  —  to 
perform  the  deed,  and  save  the  old  boy's  life;  and  who, 
all  these  weary  years,  had  been,  you  see,  the  sole 
support  of  his  injured  and  deserted  sister.  The  old 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  151 

boy  finds  that  out,  of  course,  at  the  —  undertaker's 
shop." 

Barbara  shuddered. 

"  Horrors ! "  she  said.    "  I  loathe  such  stories." 

And  Jerry  smiled.    He  seemed  more  cheerful. 

"It's  rather  touching  at  the  end,"  he  assured  her. 
"The  long,  level  rays  of  the  afternoon  sun  falling 
through  the  morgue  windows,  upon  the " 

"Jerry,  stop!" 

"Oh,  not  on  it!" 

"On  what,  then?" 

"On  her!  On  the  old  gray  head  of  his  dear  old  ducky, 
who  had  come  in,  don't  you  see,  to  identify  two  men 
instead  of  one.  One  more  than  she  expected!  And  to 
weep  on  both  —  both  heroes:  the  living  and  the  dead!" 

He  paused.  There  was  infinite  satisfaction  in  his 
voice  as  he  added : 

"I  could  sell  that  story!" 

"But,  Jerry  dear,  do  you  think  you  could  write  it  ?" 

"Write  it!"  he  exclaimed.  But  then,  again,  more 
thoughtfully,  more  softly,  as  he  considered  it: 

"Write  it     ..." 

And,  finally,  in  a  tone  half-resignation,  half-con- 
tempt   

"No!" 


152    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

v 

Two  days  afterward  he  was  at  work  again,  as  hope- 
fully as  ever,  on  one  of  those  visions  that  were  real  to 
him,  but,  alas,  as  the  outcome  proved,  as  unreal  to 
other  folk  as  all  his  other  unmarketable  dreams. 

"Suppose,"  he  said  to  her  one  day,  as  they  sat  under 
the  hawthorns,  "that  one  little  published  story  of 
mine  should  be  the  only  one?" 

The  possibility  had  just  descended  on  him  like  a 
cloud.  And  it  was  noticeable  how,  as  its  shadow  over- 
spread the  world  about  them,  the  bloom  faded  —  the 
rose  and  gray  of  walls,  the  tender  mist  of  dust  and 
distance,  and  the  thrill  of  humour  and  of  pathos  in 
that  passing  comedy.  All  vanished  in  a  doubt! 

He  felt  the  pressure  of  her  hand. 

"It  won't  be!" 

"But  suppose  it  should  be!" 

And  then,  under  the  stress  of  that  intolerable 
tumult  in  the  street,  the  roar  and  rumble  of  trucks 
and  cars,  which  made  it  so  difficult  to  speak,  or  hear, 
or  even  think,  there,  on  the  crowded  benches,  he  added 
peevishly : 

"What  is  the  use  of  all  this  interminable  hoping, 
striving,  failing " 

His  voice  broke.     But,  instantly,  he  crushed  her 


CLOUD  SHADOWS  153 

hand  in  his,  and  smiled  —  only  he  had  the  feeling, 
somehow,  that  it  was  the  merest  crack  in  that  grotesque 
bravado  of  his  face! 

"Suppose,"  she  told  him,  "it  were  the  last  that  you 
should  ever  write  —  you  would  still  be  You!" 

"But  what  am  I?  That's  what  I've  been  trying  to 
find  out!" 

"Something,"  she  answered,  "that  you  never  dream 
of!" 

She  smiled  fondly.  Even  in  another's  faith,  some- 
thing of  that  former  bloom,  it  seemed  to  him,  came 
back  —  something  of  that  ancient  hope  around  which 
all  our  planetary  lives  revolve  eternally.  Faith  holds 
us  fast  to  it,  even  in  the  night;  but,  were  it  not  for  love, 
no  morning  ever  would  o'erspread  the  sky. 

Often  they  sat  together,  waiting,  under  those  trees 
that  were  sometimes  hawthorns,  sometimes  not;  in 
what  was  now  an  intolerable  din,  and  yet  again  the 
merest  murmur;  while  they  watched,  in  faith,  a  world 
all  coloured  like  a  dream  —  in  doubt,  a  world  all 
blighted,  with  the  shadows  of  those  gathering  clouds. 

But  it  was  then,  when  the  past  was  so  irrevocable, 
the  present  so  precarious,  the  future  so  inevitably 
pledged  to  pain,  no  less  than  pleasure,  that  he  felt  that 
first,  deep  thrill  of  a  romance  that  was  neither  of  the 


154    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

past,  nor  present,  nor  future,  merely  — but  of  them  all! 
An  eternal,  a  divine  romance,  in  which,  not  merely 
as  Jeremy  and  Barbara,  but  as  Man  and  Woman  — 
strangely  journeying,  they  knew  not  why,  nor  whence, 
nor  whither  —  they  had  found  each  other's  hand! 

He  remembered  always  the  hour,  the  very  instant, 
when  the  vision  dawned  upon  him.  They  were  walking 
homeward,  and  she  had  begged  him  not  to  go  so  fast. 
And  as  they  went  more  slowly,  and  he  felt  how  heavily, 
how  helplessly,  she  leaned  upon  him  —  it  was  then. 

And  when  he  turned  and  looked  —  lo!  .  .  .  that 
self-same  vision  was  in  the  joy  and  sorrow  of  her  eyes! 


VIII 
IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING 

IN  THE  fulness  of  time  Barbara  went  away  to 
Toodlums,  and  Jeremy  was  left  alone.    It  was  that 
first,  that  age-long  separation,  only  to  be  soothed 
by  daily  letters,  and  haunted  perpetually  by  ghosts  of 
every  foolish  or  untender  word  that  had  been  uttered, 
and  by  the  shadows  even  of  those  hasty  thoughts 
withheld  from  speech.    A  sad  but  chastening  chapter 
in  the  idyl  of  young  love,  with  its  daily  confessions  and 
absolutions,  and  its  renewals  of  old  vows  and  dreams. 
Ghosts,  too,  of  unknown  but  imaginable  ills  kept 
rising  up  over  the  horizon  of  his  mind,  and,  drawing 
nearer  with  the  appointed  day,  plucked  at  his  heart- 
strings and  played  grim  melodies  upon  them  in  the 
sleepless  silences  of  the  night.    This  trembling  emphasis 
upon  his  love  made  the  rest  of  life  a  confusion  of  mere 
trivial  realities.    Even  his  rejected  hopes,  and  all  those 
other  futile  efforts  to  rescue  from  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
things  about  him  some  little  treasure  of  opportunity, 
155 


156   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

or  reward  —  these,  now,  were  the  merest  background 
of  his  life.  Its  heart  and  soul  were  in  a  world  whose 
drama,  to  all  but  him,  was  silent  and  invisible. 

How  to  reconcile  this  secret  and  lasting  life  within 
with  its  transient  and  rude  environment  of  things  felt 
and  touched,  this  inner  music  with  that  outer  tumult 
—  the  old,  old  problem  of  humanity  —  this  was  the 
real  day's  work  to  him.  Walking  among  those  visions 
in  which  he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being,  how- 
ever he  may  have  seemed  to  dwell  among  material 
things,  it  was  the  latter  that  were  dreamlike  to  him: 
the  city-street  that  was  really  strange,  and  its  men  and 
walls  that  were  the  phantoms  of  his  mind:  mere 
shadows  flecking  that  starlit  way  by  which  he  passed, 
communing  with  those  dearer  forms,  those  more 
familiar  presences,  that  thronged  his  hidden  day, 
and  made  it  happy,  or  made  it  sad,  regardless  of  the 
outer  world  and  weather. 

Sometimes,  mornings,  in  the  moments  of  his  setting 
forth,  that  outer  life  so  charmingly  reflected  this  other 
one  within,  that,  in  their  harmony,  the  mingling  of 
outer  sunlight  and  inner  hope,  and  of  the  movement 
and  sound  about  him  with  the  unseen  stir  and  the 
unheard  voices  of  his  thoughts,  he  knew  a  momentary 
thrill  and  bliss,  which  seemed  the  promise  of  some 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING    157 

sweeter  and  more  lasting  unity.  But  as  he  plunged 
deeper  into  the  city's  storm  and  stress,  discord  and 
disproportion  would  intervene,  with  all  their  intru- 
sions and  irrelevancies.  Instinctively  he  would  shrink 
back  into  that  fairer  refuge.  In  its  safe  seclusion  all 
else  would  fade  into  a  blur  and  murmur:  that  vague, 
objective  world  through  which  he  passed,  strangely, 
in  an  enchanted  circle  of  the  soul. 

What  he  was,  there;  what,  there,  he  saw,  and  heard, 
and  tasted  —  what  he  was,  and  what  he  felt,  and  did, 
in  that  divine  romance  of  spiritual  adventure,  seen 
only  by  the  unseen  —  only  the  eyes  of  love  can  guess. 
No  man  knows  another's  solitude,  save  in  a  legendary 
lore  of  dim  surmises  and  momentary  gleams.  Yet  it 
was  there,  where  he  dwelt  apart,  that  one  must  seek 
the  Jeremy  whom  Barbara  knew,  and  the  vantages 
from  which  he  saw  what  other  men  denied  so  strenu- 
ously. That  bloom  upon  the  world  was  not  inexplic- 
able. Like  the  soft  enchantment  which  lies  for  all  of 
us  upon  the  far-off  hills,  it  was  born  of  the  ethereal 
distance.  Looking  thus,  outward,  from  afar  within, 
he  saw,  indeed,  what  others  doubted;  and,  over  all,  a 
glory  and  a  glamour  that  near  at  hand  were  but  the 
common  light  of  day. 

In  space  and  time,  to  gain  long  vistas  we  must 


158    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

climb,  or  wait;  or  we  must  seek  within,  those  far 
retreats  from  which  the  outer  world  is  but  the  fair 
horizon  of  the  scene  and  setting  of  our  nobler  story  — 
that  starlit  circle  from  which,  as  strangers,  we  gaze 
upon  one  lighted  by  the  sun. 


One  must  forget  the  eaves,  under  which  he  was 
supposed  to  dwell.  Even  the  city  must  be  left  behind, 
until  its  roar  becomes  the  merest  monotone,  and  its 
towers  fade  into  the  magic  distance.  Here,  in  these 
quiet  places,  was  where  he  lived.  And  here  —  though 
he  had  been  long  a-guessing  it  —  he  was  the  son  and 
subject  of  a  King. 

To  know  him  in  his  palace,  as  Barbara  knew  him; 
to  be  with  him  among  its  treasures;  to  walk  with  him 
in  those  gardens  of  his  thoughts,  or  to  lean  with  him 
upon  their  terrace  walls,  gazing  out  upon  that  alien 
city,  where  no  man  recognized  his  royal  lineage,  and 
where,  by  immemorial  law,  he  toiled  daily  for  his 
bread  —  this  was  to  better  understand  why  he  could 
smile  and  wait.  His  hour  would  come. 

But,  meanwhile,  perils  encompassed  him  on  every 
hand.  Armed  fears  and  doubts  lay  waiting  for  him,  to 
dog  his  steps.  Strange  voices  mocked  him,  warning 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING   159 

him  to  wake.  His  hopes  were  an  illusion;  his  kingdom 
but  a  dream.  That  outer  world  alone  was  real,  they 
told  him;  and  there,  among  those  things  that  he 
could  touch  and  handle,  he  must  plot  and  strive  and 
trample  in  the  dust,  if  he  would  save  himself.  He 
was  not  a  prince,  but  the  pauper  that  he  seemed. 

Not  hireling  fears  alone,  but  lordlier  foes  by  whom 
they  were  employed,  contended  with  him  for  his  birth- 
right, striving  to  cheat  him  of  it,  hope  by  hope,  and 
grace  by  grace.  Anger,  and  its  cooler  brother,  Malice; 
dark  Envy,  and  smooth-tongued  Deceit;  and  Sloth, 
and  Lust,  and  Pride  —  man's  ancient  enemies  —  met 
him  in  the  market-place,  haunted  his  palace,  and 
supped  and  slept  with  him.  These,  not  men,  were  the 
real  companions  of  his  daily  way.  And  his  adventures 
with  them,  battles  with  them,  defeats  and  victories 
that  left  him  wounded  sometimes  unto  tears,  while 
still  he  smiled  at  life:  these  were  the  divine  romance, 
to  which  at  last  he  had  awakened.  This  was  that  fair 
new  vision  —  of  the  dignity  of  life,  of  its  high  cause, 
and  its  shining  destiny  —  ennobling  love,  and  labour; 
transfiguring  the  city  of  his  toil,  and  the  room  under 
the  eaves.  And  this  was  his  brave  new  vow,  and 
challenge:  that  nothing,  now  —  poverty,  futility,  nor 
even  failure  —  should  rob  him  of  his  royal  heritage; 


160   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

that  in  spite  of  that  inscrutable  malevolence  by  which 
he  was  forever  haunted  and  assailed,  he  would  keep 
his  faith  in  life  as  a  splendid  and  heroic  mystery. 

Walking  thus  daily,  in  those  gardens  of  the  King, 
from  which  alone  men  see  such  visions,  among  its 
secret  aisles,  leafy  with  memories,  and  abloom  with 
hopes;  and  lingering  by  those  still  waters  that  mirror 
every  fleeting  cloud  and  wing,  every  smile  and  frown, 
every  gleam  of  goodness  and  shadow  of  sin,  he  was 
oppressed  sometimes  with  the  loneliness  of  it  all :  that 
thrilling  beauty  of  remembrance  and  of  aspiration  in 
which  he  dwelt,  so  strangely,  and,  save  for  love, 
seemingly  so  solitary.  Had  he  been  a  musician,  he 
could  have  put  it  into  song;  a  painter,  into  colour; 
a  poet,  into  words.  But  he  was  none  of  these.  And, 
yet,  like  these,  he  was  a  steward  of  life's  mysteries; 
and  the  day  would  come  when  he  must  render  his 
account.  How,  then,  could  he  express  this  beauty  in 
other -loveliness,  for  men  to  share?  How  exercise  his 
stewardship?  It  is  the  old  question  that  men  ask, 
until  they  find  themselves;  until  they  find,  at  least, 
symbols  —  signs,  outward  and  visible,  for  their  secret 
visions. 

For  Jeremy,  as  yet,  there  was  no  answer. 

He  did  not  dream  that  in  his  eyes  and  smile  men 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING    161 

caught  sometimes  that  light  which  never  was  on  sea  or 
land,  but  only  in  the  King's  gardens;  that  in  his  voice 
they  heard,  faintly,  the  music  of  the  winds  and  foun- 
tains there;  and  that,  even  as  their  fellow  in  the 
common,  sunlit  world  of  toil,  they  found  in  him  hints 
of  some  romantic  mystery. 

Even  as  he  himself,  seeing  that  they  too  came  forth 
each  morning  from  palaces  and  hovels  of  the  spirit, 
caught  glimpses  through  their  own  disguise! 

in 

One  morning  —  it  was  spring  in  the  gardens  of  the 
king,  and  a  bloom  of  dew  and  light  lay,  silvery,  upon 
every  leaf  and  flower  —  he  went  down  joyfully  into 
the  city.  There  it  was  summer;  and  so  hot  and  stifling 
that  those  who  knew  him  marvelled  at  his  strange 
exuberance.  Some  called  it  Youth.  Others  —  and 
each  according  to  his  own  peculiar  vision  —  found 
various  interpretations. 

"You  must  have  had  a  fortune  left  you!" 

"You  have  had  a  letter  from  Spain!" 

"Which  horse  did  you  back?" 

"Oh,  no.    He  has  sold  his  Cumberland  Preferred!" 

"There  is  a  woman  at  the  bottom  of  it!" 

He  shook  his  head,  and  smiled,  like  one  interrogated 


1 62    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

in  a  foreign  tongue.  It  was  always  so.  Long  as  he  had 
been  with  them,  he  was  a  stranger  still.  He  could  not 
learn  their  speech;  nor  had  they  anything  but  a  smiling 
indulgence  for  his  own,  which  had  a  sound  to  them  of 
places  hidden  from  the  world. 

And  yet  —  such  is  the  mysterious  assent  we  give, 
despite  our  creeds,  to  the  very  realities  that  we  deny  — 
if  any  one  of  them,  by  chance,  had  found  some  vista 
in  his  life  a  little  more  colourful  than  he  was  wont  to 
see,  or  to  confess  to  seeing;  or  had  heard  some  strain 
of  melody,  more  thrilling,  or  more  tender,  than  he  was 
supposed  to  have  the  ear  for  —  in  short,  if  they  had 
anything  to  say  of  which  they  were  ashamed  as  men, 
but  proud  as  Man  —  it  was  to  Jerry  that  they  told  it. 
He  knew  more  of  their  homes,  of  their  wives  and 
children,  of  their  forward  fears,  and  their  wistful 
retrospects,  than  any  other  man  amongst  them,  and 
than  any  of  them  guessed.  Under  the  profane  bravado 
in  which  they  railed  or  laughed  at  life,  he  saw  them  as 
they  were:  toiling,  most  of  them,  for  others  —  grum- 
bling at  Sacrifice,  perhaps,  but  making  sacrifices,  day  by 
day,  faithfully,  and  never  dreaming  of  deserting  posts 
or  cares,  however  onerous;  deriding  Courage,  and 
Fortitude,  and  Loyalty,  and  Hope,  yet  bearing,  some 
of  them,  unlovely  burdens  —  giving,  each  day  they 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING    163 

lived  and  toiled,  the  lie  to  that  easy,  sentimental 
pessimism  which  they  glibly  preached. 

The  office,  therefore,  was  not  to  Jeremy  what  it 
seemed  to  other  eyes:  a  mere  environment  of  desks  and 
employees,  each  with  a  price  upon  his  head.  Its  noise 
and  clatter,  its  change,  its  smoke  and  speech,  were  but 
a  fleeting  dream,  whose  reality  was  something  nobler 
and  more  permanent:  not  the  low  comedy  that  it 
seemed,  but  that  drama  of  the  divine  romance,  in 
which,  each  day,  men  battle  for  their  immortal  lives 
with  dragons  and  enchantments  —  all  the  vile  sorcery 
and  demonry  of  evil  —  and  faint  and  fall,  or  conquer 
and  go  on  their  way,  as  heroically  as  ever  in  the  legends 
of  the  past. 

"You  idealize  men,"  they  were  always  telling  him. 

"No;  I  visualize  them,"  he  would  reply.  "One 
must  —  to  know  a  man.  There  is  so  little  of  him  to 
be  seen." 

This  morning  was  like  other  mornings,  but,  unlike 
most  of  them,  was  destined  for  remembrance.  Not  in 
the  history  of  men  and  nations,  nor  yet  in  that  mere 
world-gossip  with  which  the  office  hummed,  and  for 
which  great  headlines  were  being  written,  while 
editions  followed  upon  each  other's  heels;  but  in  those 
records  which  the  angels  keep.  It  was  the  day  when 


1 64    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Jeremy,  fresh  from  the  places  where  he  dwelt  apart, 
and  with  their  light  in  that  joyful  mystery  of  his  eyes, 
came  face  to  face  with  those  grim  realities  illumined 
by  the  outer  sun. 

"Ladd,"  said  the  editor  —  and  on  the  margin  of  the 
copy  that  lay  before  him,  he  began  to  trace  designs 
out  of  some  erratic  and  unsymmetrical  geometry  of 
the  emotions  —  "I  have  received  orders  that  the 
staff  must  be  reduced  to  a  working  minimum.  You 
know,  of  course,  that  in  this  I  am  as  helpless  as  you. 
I'm  sorry,  and  it  goes  against  the  grain  —  and,  if  I 
could,  I'd  keep  you  for  yourself,  you  understand. 
But  that  would  be  —  that  would  be  religion,"  he 
explained,  with  a  melancholy  smile,  and  a  quick 
glance  upward  into  Jerry's  face.  "This  is  business." 

And  then,  as  Jeremy  was  silent,  he  said  more  cheer- 
fully: 

"  You  will  have  two  weeks,  of  course,  in  which  to  — 
find  yourself." 

Jerry  cleared  his  throat;  but  he  said  nothing. 

"Fortunes  of  war!"  the  editor  reminded  him. 
"And  you  are  young.  There's  everything  in  that.  I 
shall  be  going,  too,  one  of  these  fine  mornings,"  he 
added,  grimly,  putting  the  finishing  touches  to  a  very 
lopsided  hexagon.  "That,  also,  will  be  business!" 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING   165 

He  looked  up  quietly. 

"But /shall  be  old." 

"Oh,"  Jeremy  assured  him,  finding  his  voice  at 
once,  and  laying  a  consoling  hand  upon  the  other's 
shoulder,  "don't  you  fear!  They  know  your  worth. 
In  your  case  there  isn't  any  question  of  vocation.  And 
besides,"  he  added  earnestly,  seeking  some  still  more 
convincing  word  of  cheer,  "even  though  worst  comes 
to  worst,  such  things  —  such  things  are  all  in  a  life- 
time, you  know.  Don't  worry!" 

Involuntarily,  they  both  began  to  smile. 

"  I  say,  Ladd,"  the  editor  began 

"I  know!"  Jeremy  interposed,  his  face  flushing. 
"It  is  7  who  am  being  fired!" 

And  now  it  was  the  editor  who  cleared  his  throat. 

IV 

How  do  men  find  themselves? 

That  was  the  question  which  Jerry  asked  himself,  as 
he  went  out  into  the  crowded  streets,  where  a  shadow 
had  fallen  upon  the  mysterious  brightness  of  the  day; 
and,  over  and  over,  he  asked  it,  as  the  day  went  by 
—  one  of  those  brief  fourteen  allotted  him.  Never  had 
he  felt  so  much  a  stranger.  And  there  is  no  loneliness 
like  the  oblivion  of  the  crowd;  no  silence  like  the 


166   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

ceaseless  roar  of  city  life,  when  it  has  no  voice  for  him 
who  listens. 

As  he  passed  through  that  familiar  square  where  he 
had  walked  so  proudly  upon  one  memorable  occasion 
of  his  life,  noting  now  the  dejected  figures  on  the 
benches,  it  came  to  him  that  some  men  never  find 
themselves 

Unfit  for  life  —  that  was  the  phrase  which  kept 
running  in  his  head.  The  suspicion  that  it  might  be 
applicable  to  himself  had  never  dawned  on  him  before. 
That  there  were  men,  of  whom  he  might  be  one,  who 
were  always  strangers  among  their  fellows,  always 
alien  of  thought  and  speech,  in  a  world  which  they 
could  only  stare  at,  wonderingly,  helplessly,  like  little 
children.  Dependent  ones,  with  doubtful  gifts. 
Journeymen  of  irrelevant,  almost  impertinent  crafts- 
manship, in  a  land  that  acknowledged  but  few  and 
stern  necessities,  and  where  man  ate  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  a  traditional  toil.  Wanderers  afield;  gleaners  of 
wild-honey;  vendors  of  exotic  wares  as  fair,  perhaps, 
but  as  unmarketable  as  love. 

The  possibility  that,  for  all  his  dreaming,  for  all  his 
striving  even,  this  might  be  true  of  him,  haunted  his 
thoughts;  and  as  often  as  he  thrust  it  desperately  back 
into  the  world  from  whose  indifference  it  came  to  him 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING    167 

—  as  often  as  he  faced  it  with  the  utterly  unreasonable 
and  defenseless  hope,  which  dwelt  in  that  other, 
kinder,  fairer  world  within  —  it  would  return,  to  dog 
his  loneliness.  To  have  known  that  it  was  true  would 
have  been  easier.  The  inevitable  is  always  to  be  borne; 
it  is  doubt  and  suspense  that  are  intolerable. 

He  hurried  from  the  square,  from  its  dozing  drunk- 
ards, and  creatures  with  the  bloodshot  eyes  who 
stared  straight  forward  into  space,  seeing  what  he 
shuddered  even  to  surmise.  With  a  tightening  of  the 
heart-strings,  and  a  clutching  at  his  throat,  he  passed 
on  into  the  more  active  turmoil  of  the  streets,  with  a 
sense  of  relief  in  that  ceaseless  movement,  and  in  his 
own  small  part  in  it.  It  was  something  to  walk  —  to 
achieve  even  that  barren  progress;  to  put  not  only  the 
stones  under  his  feet,  but  those  hard  thoughts  in  his 
mind,  behind  him;  to  feel  that  he  was  getting  on,  at 
least  in  space  and  time,  if  not  in  more  substantial 
ways;  and  with  the  hope  —  always  that  inextinguish- 
able hope  —  that,  around  the  corner,  he  would  en- 
counter Something  —  that  always  possible,  always  to- 
be-looked-for  Something,  which  would  change  his  life. 

Perhaps  he  was  right.  Hopes,  the  least  reasonable 
in  the  world,  have  been  known  to  be  the  truest  coun- 
sellors. Few  but  can  recall  some  darkened  hour  of 


168    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

life  when  the  outer  voices  were  a  perfect  harmony  of 
foreboding,  and  only  one  still,  small  tone  within 
denied  their  prophecy,  and  did  not  cease  until,  in 
time,  their  din  was  silenced  by  the  unforeseen. 

So,  now,  to  Jeremy,  against  those  outer  facts  of  his 
impending  failure  in  the  very  hour  of  his  greatest  need, 
there  was  but  one  —  one  single  stubborn  fact  in  either 
world  of  his,  that  strove  against  accumulating  doubts 
and  fears.  It  was  that  solitary  Voice  within,  which 
no  one  but  himself  could  hear;  which  spoke  to  him 
alone,  and  in  that  language  which  all  men  understand, 
but  no  man  has  the  power  to  utter.  Some  say  it  is 
the  voice  of  God;  others  that  it  is  the  speech  of  angels. 
However  that  may  be,  and  however  it  be  heard 
—  whether  in  faith,  or  only  in  wonder,  or  even  in 
doubt  —  so  long  as  he  is  listening,  man  knows  it  for 
his  native  tongue.  Speech  of  some  far,  fair  country, 
falling  as  music  upon  his  exiled  ear. 

But  meanwhile  —  meanwhile,  he  asked  the  Voice, 
could  one  live  on  hope?  Eat  hope,  pay  hope?  .  .  . 

It  is  the  old  question,  and  the  old  voice  answers  it, 
in  the  old,  old  fashion,  as  mysteriously,  as  ceaselessly, 
as  the  flight  of  time:  denying  nothing,  but  affirming, 
affirming,  and  still  affirming,  ever  and  forever,  in  the 
face  of  reason,  in  the  face  of  facts,  and  in  the  face  of 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING    169 

man,  and  the  whole  inexorable  outer  world  of  outer 
Law  —  Hope,  Hope,  Hope  —  Hope,  with  every  throb 
of  the  human 'heart!  Hope,  with  every  beat  of  the 
winging  moments!  —  as  it  was  in  the  beginning,  is 
now,  and  ever  shall  be,  world  without  end. 

Jeremy  was  silent. 

But  the  Voice  was  not.  It  was  still  speaking  when 
he  turned  into  a  wretched  street  to  which  he  had  been 
sent.  And  when  he  entered  a  crowded  tenement, 
pushing  his  way  through  an  awestruck  throng  upon 
the  walk,  and  climbed  the  stairs,  and  knocked  at  a 
door  with  crepe  upon  its  knob,  still  was  that  murmur 
in  his  ear.  Still  was  a  whisper  there  when  he  emerged, 
and  hurried  back,  out  of  that  squalid  mourning,  to 
write  the  old,  old  story  of  man's  hopelessness. 

Yet  he  shuddered  as  he  wrote;  and  turned,  heart- 
sick, from  the  familiar  words  that  stared  so  blackly 
at  him  out  of  the  printed  page  that  evening: 

Suicide  —  Out  oj  Work 

Foolish  words!  Even  to-day  he  knew  that  they  were 
so.  And  yet  —  to-day,  of  all  days  in  his  life,  there  was 
a  grim  reality  in  foolishness.  Even  in  another's.  And, 
with  a  kind  of  horror,  Jeremy  turned  from  it,  as  from 
his  own. 


170    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

v 

The  day  was  drawing  to  a  close,  when,  grimy  with 
the  dust  with  which  the  wind  smote  him,  almost  blind- 
ing him  as  he  came  into  his  familiar  quarter  of  the 
town,  and  deafened  by  the  din  of  traffic  there,  Jeremy 
reached  at  last  that  time-stained  row  of  dilapidated 
dwellings  where  he  lodged.  The  room  under  the  eaves 
was  stifling,  but  it  was  a  refuge  from  the  ceaseless  glare 
and  turmoil  down  below,  in  which  it  was  so  difficult  to 
think,  and  so  impossible  to  plan. 

He  threw  himself,  face  downward,  on  the  bed.  In 
the  demoralization  of  defeat  —  that  first  fatigue  of 
body,  and  utter  bewilderment  of  thought  and  will  — 
it  was  easiest,  thus,  to  shut  out  the  dingy  cheerlessness 
of  the  place.  Those  faded  wall-flowers,  and  tattered 
curtains,  and  all  the  coffin-coloured  furniture  in  which 
old  boarding-houses  are  the  graves  of  departed  pomp 
and  pride,  perpetual  warnings  to  their  inhabitants 
that  all  things  shine  awhile,  only  to  end  in  gloom  and 
dust. 

Lying  there,  the  city  became  a  murmur  and  a 
memory.  But  there  also,  in  that  refuge,  neither  of 
space,  nor  time  —  that  freedom  which  man  seeks 
vainly  in  a  world  whose  law  is  limitation  —  that 
inwardness  to  which,  in  the  instincts  of  divinity,  he 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING   171 

turns  from  an  environment  that  seems,  sometimes,  a 
soulless  mechanism  and  inquisition  of  malevolence  — 
there  also,  even  there,  the  light  had  vanished!  What, 
that  morning,  had  been  all  abloom  and  sparkling  with 
the  dew  of  hope,  had  faded,  in  those  few  brief  inter- 
vening hours,  to  an  inexplicable  desolation.  Every 
fountain  had  ceased  to  play  —  every  singing  sound  of 
winds  and  waters  slept,  now,  in  silence. 

It  was  that  Silence  in  which  he  who  hath  ears,  hears 
—  voices  of  mystery. 

"Thou  fool!"  they  said  to  him.  And,  over  and 
over,  he  heard 

"Fool,  Fool,  Fool  that  thou  art!  See,  now,  what 
comes  of  dreaming  !  " 

In  all  that  mocking  chorus  there  was  not  one  single 
friendly  accent  to  be  heard.  Where,  he  wondered,  was 
the  God  of  dreamers?  And  the  angels  that  are  said  to 
watch  over  the  foolish  children  of  this  underworld? 
Wlno  cared?  .  .  .  Two  women!  —  that  was  all. 

Two  mortals,  now.  Some  day,  perhaps,  one  more, 
created  in  his  very  image  —  another  dreamer,  drunken 
with  a  wine  not  made  with  hands,  but  lying  in  some 
gutter  of  the  solid  earth  —  would  care!  and  curse  him 
for  that  heritage  of  moonshine. 

Even  his  body  trembled!    The  remembrance  of  that 


172    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

other  dreamer,  blissfully  asleep  as  yet,  was  in  itself 
almost  a  prayer  that  he  might  never  waken,  who  was 
now  so  safe  from  pain,  so  innocent  of  folly!  It  was  the 
first  of  that  sudden  throng  of  bat-winged  creatures  who 
sleep  in  light,  but  flit  in  the  darkness  of  blighted 
gardens.  Black  thoughts  and  wishes,  from  whose 
apparition  he  recoiled;  unbidden  guests  to  whom  he 
shut  his  eyes,  and  whom  he  drove  back,  blindly,  into 
those  haunted  shades  from  which  they  came  to  him. 

And  then  it  was  that  his  very  soul  cried  out  to  the 
mystery  about  him:  a  cry  that  echoed  and  reechoed, 
in  the  silence,  with  a  sound  like  laughter.  .  ,  . 
Then  all  was  still  again. 

But  it  was  a  strange  stillness!  Not  like  the  other, 
when,  still  on  the  confines  of  that  world  which  he  had 
left  behind,  he  could  hear  its  murmuring  —  silent  now, 
and  utterly  forgot.  Even  those  mocking  voices  were 
no  longer  heard,  in  this  oblivion,  this  sudden  hush,  and 
calm,  which  had  befallen  him.  He  was  alone  —  alone, 
and  safe!  Not  only  men,  but  those  haunting  shapes  of 
evil  —  Envy,  and  Pride,  and  Fear,  and  all  the  rest  of 
that  dark  band  by  which  he  was  assailed  —  had 
vanished,  now.  He  was  alone,  at  last.  Yet  not  alone! 
.  .  .  For,  all  about  him,  in  their  stead,  hovered  a 
white-winged  host  of  peace! 


IN  THE  GARDENS  OF  THE  KING   173 

Silently,  invisibly,  they  had  come  to  him  in  answer 
to  his  cry.  Healing  presences,  and  still,  small  voices 
of  good  cheer,  out  of  the  past,  with  its  hard-won  wis- 
dom; out  of  the  present,  with  its  priceless  treasures  of 
love  and  hope;  out  of  the  future,  also  —  that  unknown 
future,  which  surely  must  be  safe  and  fair,  when  its 
very  threshold  was  so  thronged  with  angels! 

Never  before  in  this  enchanted  circle  of  the  soul, 
this  dream  within  a  dream,  had  he  known  seclusion,  or 
immunity,  or  love,  like  this  —  this  secret  of  the  garden's 
heart. 

And  this  was  a  beginning!  Who  could  say  what 
depths  of  stillness  and  security  there  might  be  here, 
waiting  for  his  need!  What  splendid  answers  waiting 
for  his  cry ! 

It  came  to  him  how  often  he  had  heard  of  this;  how 
little  he  had  heeded  what  man  had  said,  and  sung  of  it, 
from  the  beginning.  And  it  was  true!  —  true  as  ever, 
that  for  every  dreamer  there  is  a  refuge  long  hidden 
from  himself;  and  seldom  found  until  all  other  ways 
are  desolate.  True  that  there  are  voices  there  — 
speech  that  no  language  can  interpret,  but  every 
listening  ear  may  understand;  and  wings  on  which 
all  sinking,  failing,  dying  things  are  lifted  into  life 
again ! 


i74    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

For  Jeremy  —  so  new  to  this,  so  wondering,  and 
amazed  —  it  was  a  mystery  too  strange  and  fair  for 
words,  or  even  for  his  thought.  He  only  knew  that  now, 
in  those  familiar  places,  so  lately  desolate,  he  found 
old  hopes  abloom,  old  fountains  playing! 

And  as  he  rose  up  from  his  knees,  there  in  the 
twilight  of  his  room,  he  listened  fearlessly  to  the  city's 
murmuring. 


IX 

WAYFARERS 

FROM  those  mysterious  refuges,  lovely  and 
unlovely,  where  men  dwell  apart,  meeting  in  a 
common  world  in  which  they  are  but  phan- 
toms of  themselves,  and  their  temporal  drama  is  but 
a  play  of  shadows  —  the  reflection  of  unseen  realities, 
more  fair,  more  terrible  —  they  come  each  morning 
into  the  market-place  seemingly  so  like  each  other  that 
Only  a  sinner  who  is  something  of  a  saint  as  well  can 
guess  the  divinity  in  the  throng.  For  only  kindness 
has  eyes  for  kindness,  faith  for  faith,  hope  for  hope. 
To-day  mankind  was  tenderer  than  ever  it  had  been 
before.  Its  very  ugliness  was  fair:  not  with  mere 
radiance  of  the  sun,  but  with  a  light  that  no  one  in  all 
those  hurrying  thousands  could  possibly  have  had 
eyes  for,  unless  —  like  Jeremy  —  that  morning,  and  for 
the  first  time,  he  had  become  a  father!  The  father  of 
a  son! 

A  certain  blindness,  now,  was  gone  forever.     He 
175 


176    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

could  see  in  the  men  about  him,  in  the  women  whom 
he  passed,  in  the  children  whom  he  paused  to  smile  at, 
things  that  belied  the  hardness  and  indifference  in 
those  elder  faces;  and  in  those  younger  ones,  in  their 
play  and  wonder,  something  shining,  that  grime,  or 
hunger,  or  disease  itself,  no  longer  hid  from  him  — 
something  helpless  that  stirred  his  heart.  For  in  the 
news  from  Toodlums,  not  he  alone,  but  every  man  had 
suddenly  become  a  father!  Every  woman  was  a 
mother  now;  and  every  child  was,  in  some  trembling 
sense,  his  own. 

It  had  brought  him  nearer  to  his  fellows,  strangely 
nearer.  In  this  new  kinship,  their  hidden  lives  would 
never  be  again  the  mystery  they  had  been  before.  He 
could  guess  more  easily  their  secret  joys  and  sorrows: 
those  light  hopes,  and  those  heavy  burdens,  with  which 
they  passed  him  in  the  street.  Their  strife  for  bread; 
the  eagerness  with  which  they  fought  for  more  than 
they  would  ever  need  themselves;  their  thwarted 
hopes,  and  their  hard  dilemmas,  and,  in  utter  weari- 
ness, or  chagrin,  or  fear,  their  desperate  sacrifice  of 
unseen  birthrights  for  a  pottage  that  is  made  with 
hands  —  all  these  cried  out  unto  his  pity.  Always 
they  had  touched,  but  never  had  they  thrilled  him 
until  now  he,  also,  felt  white  arms  clinging  to  his 


WAYFARERS  177 

frailty;  and  his  heart  all  trembling,  even  in  its  joy, 
with  the  knowledge  of  those  precious  futures  entangled 
with  his  own. 

He  laid  the  message  upon  the  desk  of  his  friend,  the 
Editor,  without  a  word.  The  other  read  it  once,  twice, 
thrice,  before  he  raised  his  eyes  to  those  youthfully 
parental  ones.  Even  then  it  was  with  the  slightly 
embarrassed  air  of  elder  fathers  that  he  offered  his 
congratulations;  and  he  added  what,  perhaps,  might 
better  have  been  left  unsaid 

"Now,  of  course,  you  have  got  to  find  yourself!" 

—  which  was  undeniable. 

As  yet,  in  his  letters  to  Barbara,  he  had  written 
nothing  of  his  impending  fate.  It  would  be  time 
enough  when  he  could  both  propound  the  question  of 
their  future,  and  answer  it,  at  once;  and  with  some- 
thing more  than  this  indefinite  but  persistent  hope  in 
which  he  gazed  about  him  for  some  new  way  forward. 

But  it  was  the  old  way  that  still  seemed  likeliest. 
If  he  could  find,  somehow,  somewhere,  in  all  this  tumult 
and  confusion,  some  true  story,  some  tale  to  write  — 
some  little  chapter  out  of  that  divine  romance  to 
which  he  was  awakening  —  that  seemed  the  surest, 
indeed  the  only  way,  in  which  to  find  himself. 

For  he  was  still,  despite  his  failure  to  impress  the 


178    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

world,  a  novelist.  One  trifling  published  story,  it 
was  true,  was  the  merest  promise  of  fulfilment,  in  that 
oldest,  fondest,  loveliest  of  all  his  dreams.  The  friend 
who  had  edited  his  news  from  Toodlumshire  had 
already  written  books.  Even  so,  Jeremy  also  was  to 
live  and  die  a  novelist.  Because  it  was  so  that  he  had 
seen,  always,  that  spiritual  hero  inhabiting  his  dream 
of  self:  that  ideal  Jeremy,  whose  form  and  stature, 
whose  mien  and  movement,  whose  very  mind  and  soul, 
he  was  forever  striving,  consciously,  and  unconsciously 
as  well,  to  realize,  though  with  such  fortune  as  has 
been  seen.  Illusion  or  not,  and  however  to  be  ac- 
counted for,  it  was  the  pitch  to  which  he  tuned  his 
life — heart-strings  to  harp-strings.  And  whether  it  was 
because  the  harmony  was  untrue,  or  because  his  play- 
ing was  unskilful,  or  that  for  those  who  listened  the 
melody  was  too  familiar,  or  too  new  and  strange,  it 
would  be  hard  to  say;  but,  somehow,  the  music  of  his 
life  seemed  never  to  awaken  those  answering  echoes 
that  he  longed  to  hear. 

There  were  echoes  that  he  failed  to  hear,  because 
they  were  not  the  ones  for  which  he  listened.  Echoes 
that,  from  first  to  last  —  and  for  all  that  Barbara  could 
protest  in  that  clear  audition  of  her  love  —  he  never 
dreamed  of.  Echoes  that  still  are  to  be  heard,  and 


WAYFARERS  179 

that  still  are  musical,  in  a  world  where,  failing  as  a 
novelist,  he  accounted  himself,  and  was  by  others  also 
accounted,  in  that  world's  wisdom,  a  failure  as  a  man, 

as  well. 

ii 

Seated  one  evening  by  that  upper  window  where  he 
and  Barbara  had  gazed  so  often  at  the  stars,  he  had 
been  thinking  of  Toodlums :  a  thousand  wistful  thoughts 
that  wandered  even  to  the  little  river  there,  and  to 
the  woods  where,  in  that  very  hour,  he  knew  the 
thrushes  would  be  singing.  And  as  he  dwelt  upon 
old  half-forgotten  things,  the  new,  by  contrast,  seemed 
doubly  sad. 

Doubts  had  come  creeping  in  again  —  those  shadows 
fatal  even  to  the  divine  romance.  The  vision  of  it 
was  so  hard  to  keep  —  that  vision  of  life's  higher 
dignity,  in  its  lower  shame  and  mockery  of  defeat;  of 
its  light,  in  darkness;  of  its  wealth,  in  poverty;  of  its 
eternal  safety,  in  mortal  perils  of  pain  and  fear.  Faith 
he  knew  —  faith,  and  its  adventurous  daring  —  was 
the  secret  of  Romance.  Of  all  Romance,  human  and 
divine.  But  how  was  he  to  keep  that  faith?  —  that 
perfect  freedom  —  in  these  fetters  of  inglorious  Space, 
and  inexorable  Time?  That  largeness,  in  this  littleness ! 

It  would  be  easier,  he  told  himself,  if  he  but  had 


i8o    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

some  surer  foothold  on  the  solid  earth  —  easier  in 
honour,  or  in  ownership,  to  keep  that  splendid  feeling 
of  the  universe.  And  that  heroic  sense  of  all  eternity 
—  if  fourteen  days  of  it  were  not  so  paramount ! 

They  passed  so  swiftly  that  they  left  him  numb.  It 
was  a  paralysis  of  doubt  and  fear.  Before  his  very 
eyes  Romance  was  dying.  Soon  there  would  be  no 
more  poetry,  no  story  worth  the  telling,  left.  Daily, 
he  had  sought,  and  waited;  watched,  and  listened:  but 
all  in  vain.  To  his  dazed  senses  the  world  about  him, 
brushing  him,  jostling  him,  deafening,  blinding  him, 
was  but  a  foolish  uproar:  all  mad  and  meaningless 
confusion ;  and  man,  to  his  bewildered  reason,  seemed 
but  a  leaf  whirled,  helpless,  in  some  ceaseless  gale. 

Nightly,  there  by  that  upper  window,  he  had  striven 
to  revive  old  visions  —  to  conjure  up  that  former  bloom 
and  glamour,  which  he  had  seen  upon  this  very  world. 
It  would  not  return  —  not  even  to  his  imagination. 
His  very  pen,  it  seemed  to  him,  balked  at  those  words 
that  were  no  longer  true. 

But  when  he  tried  to  say  what  now  appeared  to  him 
as  truth  —  tried  to  find  words  for  that  benighted  scene 
and  setting,  and  for  the  warp  and  woof  of  that  inter- 
minable plot,  in  which  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  and 
all  men's  helpless  lives  were  being  woven:  when  he 


WAYFARERS  181 

tried  to  find  a  story  even  in  his  failure  and  despair  — 
his  pen  dropped  from  his  fingers.  .  .  .  Perhaps 
that,  also,  was  not  true. 

Then  what?    What  could  he  count  upon  as  true? 

It  was  then  that  his  thoughts  turned  home  to 
Toodlums.  He  could  count,  always,  upon  two  women 
—  and  that  other  dreamer  there,  scarcely  as  yet 
awake.  Those  three,  at  least  —  mother,  and  wife, 
and  child.  Little  enough  of  truth  and  beauty  to  be 
sure  of!  —  but  all  that  man  has  ever  needed  to  keep 
him  safe.  In  gathering  shadows,  it  is  to  love  —  always 
to  love  —  that  he  goes  back,  to  find  the  light  again. 
The  light  of  faith  and  its  romance. 

But  now,  to-night,  just  when  that  light  began  to 
dawn  again  upon  the  darkened  world,  and  life,  with 
all  its  failures  and  its  disappointments,  and  its  impend- 
ing peril,  seemed,  once  more  to  him,  a  divine  adventure 
in  which,  to-morrow,  he  was  to  rise  again,  and  gird 
himself  with  unseen  might,  to  play  the  hero  in  the 
man  —  just  then  the  Devil  was  at  Jerry's  ear. 

The  Devil,  it  is  said,  is  dead;  or  was  never  aught  but 
a  nightmare  of  man's  childhood  dreams.  However 
that  may  be,  that  dark,  eternal  truth  which  never 
dies,  and  which  waits  and  watches,  sleepless,  lest  man 
in  his  weakness  and  despair  should  pluck  up  heart 


182    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

again,  was  there.    And  I  like  the  old  names,  for  the 
old  truths,  best. 

"Ah,  yes,"  it  whispered,  "for  some  men,  life  is  a 
romance.  Some  men  are  heroes  .  .  .  - 

The  pause  was  eloquent. 

"  Even  you  might  have  been  —  perhaps.      To  be 
born  again,  it  is  now  a  little  late,  my  friend      .     . 
but  you  might  try!" 

The  silence  was  profound. 

"You  have  three  days  left.  Three  whole  days  in 
which  to  give  the  lie  to  ages  —  think  of  that !  To 
generations  upon  generations  of  sin  and  folly,  of  which 
you  are  the  flower!  The  lovely  flower!" 

Jerry  almost  laughed  himself.    The  Devil  did! 

Dreamer  that  he  was,  he  had  never  thought  of  it 
before:  that,  for  some  men,  hope  is  such  sublime 
presumption! 

"  I  see,  my  friend,  that  you  are  not  so  childish  as  is 
generally  supposed.  You  are  growing  up.  You  are 
beginning  to  observe  and  reason.  Mark  you,  now, 
what  I  should  hardly  have  said  to  you  before.  You 
would  not  have  understood  me.  You  are  seeking 
Freedom.  You  want  to  be  unshackled  from  these 
petty  miseries  of  time  and  space.  Why,  so  did  that 
other  wise  man  —  that  other  dreamer,  the  other  day! 


WAYFARERS  183 

You  remember  him  —  or  what  was  left  of  him.  The 
man  out  of  work.  With  him,  also,  it  was  a  little 
matter  of,  say,  three  out  of  fourteen  days.  He  found 
release.  .  .  . 

"Ah,  well,  of  course,  don't  think  of  it  again.  It  is 
not  to  be  expected  that  one  of  your  peculiar  sensi- 
bilities—  the  flower  of  so  delicate  a  race  of  heroes!  — 
would  have  the  heart,  or  hand,  for  so  violent  an 
adventure." 

"But  the  next  best  freedom  is  in  your  very  line! 
All  the  poets,  all  the  dreamers  in  the  world,  have 
sung  of  it  —  the  Freedom  of  the  Road!  Had  you 
never  thought  of  that  ?  Why,  there's  the  door!  Beyond 
it  the  whole  earth  lies  —  yours,  every  road  of  it! 
Yours,  every  day  of  it!  —  to  dream  in.  Every  night! 
—  without  a  ghost  of  care.  And  poverty  —  that  blessed 
poverty  of  the  saints  and  poets!  without  a  need  beyond 
the  bread  they'll  give  you,  never  fear  —  for  Christ's 
sake! 

"Eh?  .  .  .  That  would  be  Romance!  Wander- 
ing up  and  down  the  earth,  with,  every  new  day,  new 
adventures!  —  new  dreams,  every  hour!  Old  dreams, 
too  —  dreams,  remember,  that  you  never  asked  to 
dream:  gifts,  surely,  from  a  God  of  Freedom! 

"And  as  for  love  —  why,  if  you  love  them  so,  why 


184    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

burden  them  so  heavily,  with  all  this  weight  of  your 
bewilderment,  your  incompetence?  Those  dear  to 
you  will  live  more  safely  when  you  are  gone.  Pity 
will  be  kind  to  them:  kinder  than  Folly!  For  them 
also  —  listen  but  a  moment  longer:  the  truth's 
soon  told  —  for  them,  also,  Freedom!  And  out  of 
their  lives  your  own  will  fade  as  a  dream;  and  as  a 
dream  their  lives  will  fade  from  yours;  and  in  the 
end  .  .  .  well,  as  to  that,  my  friend,  where  the 
beginning  was  so  easy  that  no  one  remembers  it,  surely 
one  may  be  quite  comfortable  about  the  end!" 

The  voice  was  silent. 

All  the  while,  even  when  it  spoke  most  movingly, 
Jeremy  had  heard,  beneath  its  clear  discourse,  that 
other  still,  small  voice  of  hope.  Now,  in  the  quiet, 
it  had  a  warning  sound.  Or,  rather,  it  was  not  the 
sound  itself  —  it  was  its  ceaselessness  that  made  him 
listen.  .  .  . 

"Why  do  you  hesitate?"  whispered  that  bolder 
voice  again.  "What  you  hear  is  but  the  beating  of 
your  own  heart!  And  when  your  heart  stops  — fft I — 
the  little  voice  stops  too!" 

"It  might  not."     .    .     .    Jeremy  was  listening. 

"Bah!"  said  the  Devil.  "What  are  you  afraid  of? 
An  old  wife's  tale,  to  frighten  children  with!  I've 


WAYFARERS  185 

told  you  where  the  stories  are.  You'll  never  find  one 
here." 

"\rnay."    .    .    .    Jeremy  was  listening  still. 

The  Devil  laughed. 

"You!"  he  cried.  "You  are  a  pretty  hero!  A 
very  flower  of  romance,  eh?  Take  my  advice,  and 
be  off  with  you,  before  it  is  too  late." 

There  was  a  moment's  silence. 

"Well,  then,"  said  the  Devil,  "stay  —  and  be 
damned!" 

And  as  he  stayed  —  seemingly  so  solitary,  so  dumb, 
so  motionless,  so  utterly  remote  from  crisis  and  decision, 
from  stir  and  action,  from  the  thrill  and  drama  of 
what  men  call  Life  —  lost,  seemingly,  in  the  shadows 
of  its  prose,  without  a  gleam  of  its  poetry  and  romance 
—  every  muscle  that  men  strive  with  was  stretched 
and  strong!  And  every  nerve  with  which  they  fire 
their  clay,  for  use  and  service  —  even  for  the  merest 
hope  of  some  diviner  purpose  than  they  know  —  was 
like  a  flame! 

HI 

Seated  there  among  the  presences  and  voices  of 
the  larger  life,  he  was  conscious  of  a  new  one  entering 
through  that  very  door  whose  way  to  freedom  he 


1 86    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

had  declined.  It  was  open  for  the  solace  of  the  breeze 
that  floated  through  the  window  and  passed  on  into 
the  hall  from  which  the  phantom  came  —  rustling  in, 
without  a  word  of  greeting,  and  seating  itself  among 
the  evening  shadows,  in  Barbara's  chair. 

He  said  nothing,  and  but  turned  his  head.  As  for 
the  ghost,  the  moonlight  told  him  who  it  was  —  one 
of  those  mysterious  beings  who  haunt  old  boarding- 
houses,  coming  and  going  as  silently  as  now,  at  all 
hours  of  the  day  and  night;  and  variously  explicable, 
according  to  one's  gift  of  vision.  This  one  dwelt 
across  the  hall.  He  had  seen  her  on  the  stairs,  where 
she  might  indeed  have  been  a  ghost,  for  aught  he 
knew  of  her;  and  he  had  been,  at  times,  conscious 
of  her  apparition  in  the  dining-room  below,  where 
spectres  are  unlikely  visitors.  And  he  had  heard  her 
name. 

Taking  her  for  granted,  as  she  had  taken  him,  he 
said  nothing.  He  was  becoming  used  to  uninvited 
guests.  This  one  spoke  at  last,  softly,  in  the  merest 
reverie  of  voice. 

"I  knew  that  you  would  understand." 

"Oh!"  he  answered. 

"It  isn't  everyone  that  does,  is  it?"  inquired  the 
same  calm  tone  of  confidence;  and  now  there  was  a 


WAYFARERS  187 

stir  beside  him,  and  some  faint,  exotic  perfume  in 
the  air.  "  I  knew  you  would.  I  knew  it  the  first  day 
that  I  saw  you." 

"How  —  how  did  you  know?" 

"It  was  in  your  face.  You  didn't  look  at  me  as 
other  men." 

He  had  hardly  looked  at  her  at  all.  Nor  could  he 
remember  when  they  met ;  or  where. 

"It  was  on  the  steps.  I  knew  at  once  that  I  had 
nothing " 

She  paused,  and,  for  the  first  time,  turned  upon 
him  the  mystery  of  her  eyes. 

" — nothing,"  she  repeated  gratefully,  "to  fear. 
You  pitfed  me.  I  saw  it  in  your  face." 

It  was  very  possible,  of  course. 

"You  understood  how  I  had  suffered." 

This  was  news,  indeed! 

"You  read  me  at  a  glance.  I  knew,  then,  that 
concealment  was  impossible.  That  we  were  to  be 
friends  —  always!" 

She  confessed  all  this  in  a  breathless  undertone 
that  Jeremy  had  heard  before,  though  only  at  the 
theatre. 

"Why  are  you  silent?"  she  demanded.  "You  are 
lonely." 


188    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

He  hesitated. 

"Yes,"  he  said. 

"And  sad." 

Again  he  hesitated. 

"Yes." 

"Why?"  she  asked.  And,  as  he  was  silent,  she 
answered  for  him,  in  a  kindly  way.  "You  have 
many  cares." 

"Nothing  but  will  pass." 

"How  do  you  know  that  they  will  pass?" 

"Things  change,"  he  answered,  "when  it  is  darkest." 

"Ah,  but  the  time  comes  when  they  never  change!" 
she  told  him  sadly.  "You  see,  1  know!" 

His  heart  reproached  him. 

"I'm  sorry,"  he  replied,  touched  by  the  sudden 
thought  of  how  much  more  hopeless  and  forbidding 
even  than  to  himself,  the  world  must  seem  to  lonely 
women.  Women,  he  thought  —  he  thought  so  to 
the  end  —  were  infinitely  more  sensitive  to  life  than 
men;  infinitely  more  tender-hearted,  and  more  fair 
and  delicate  of  mind  as  they  were  of  flesh;  and  more 
pure  of  vision.  He  had  never  doubted  it;  and  always 
as  he  looked  into  their  eyes,  or  watched  them  in  their 
silences,  he  had  felt  a  shame  before  those  thoughts 
that  he  could  only  guess,  but  that  he  fancied  were  a 


WAYFARERS  189 

kind  of  garden,  more  springlike  than  his  own.  He 
had  always  thought  of  it  as  morning  there,  with 
something  of  childhood  lingering  like  dew;  or  evening, 
with  its  maternal  hush;  or,  if  the  flowers  ever  drooped 
or  withered  in  the  heat  of  noon,  or  fell  beneath  the 
wrath  and  torment  of  the  storm  —  they  did,  some- 
times, he  knew  —  heat  and  storm  were  of  that  outer 
world,  where  women,  he  believed,  were  always  strangers 
like  himself.  Barbara,  surely,  had  never  roused  him 
from  that  dream.  And  now  beside  him  was  another 
woman,  vaguely  young,  and  dimly  fair,  who  had 
faced  that  world,  before  which  even  his  coarser  strength 
had  quailed.  Remembering  his  weakness  now  with 
shame,  his  heart  went  out  to  her. 

"You  have  friends,"  he  said. 

She  seemed  to  shrink  from  the  very  word. 

"Friends!" 

"Ah,  then,"  he  said,  at  once,  "you  must  know 
Barbara!" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Women  do  not  care  for  women." 

"Barbara  will  care!" 

"Perhaps.  I'd  rather  trust  the  sympathy  of  a  man. 
Not  all  men,"  she  added,  quickly  —  and  then  with  a 
touch  of  irony,  "one  in  ten  thpusand,  perhaps!  Some, 


190    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

one  like  you  —  a  dreamer.  I  knew  you  were  a 
dreamer,  that  day  upon  the  steps." 

"But  Barbara,"  he  began — and  stopped  instinc- 
tively; but  wondering  that  any  one  who  had  seen, 
could  question  Barbara. 

"I  don't  doubt  that  she  is  all  you  say.  But  she 
wouldn't  care  for  me." 

"Why?" 

"You  wouldn't  understand.' 

"Perhaps  I  would." 

"No.    You  are  an  idealist." 

"If  that  is  true,  wouldn't  that  be  a  reason,"  he 
suggested,  "for  understanding?" 

She  seemed  to  hesitate. 

"Well  — let  me  see  whether  you  are  a  true  idealist 
.  .  .  /  don't  believe  in  anything,  you  know.  I  don't 
believe  in  God,  and  I  don't  believe  in  man  — not  even 
in  idealists.  Men  are  all  alike  —  sensualists.  Ideal- 
ists are  esthetic  sensualists,  that  is  all.  You  see,  I 
know.  My  husband  was  a  rake.  And  as  for  women 
—  we  are  all  alike,  too.  The  only  difference  is  that 
some  of  us  are  legally  good,  and  the  rest  of  us 
are  —  illegally  bad.  .  .  .  What  do  you  say  to 
that?" 

"T  say,"  Jeremy  made  answer,  without  an  instant's 


WAYFARERS  191 

hesitation,  and  in  a  tone  of  passionate  protest,  "that 
you  don't  believe  anything  of  the  kind!" 

She  clapped  her  hands. 

"Ab!  What  did  I  tell  you?  You  are  —  you  are 
a  true  idealist !  But  I  do  believe  it  —  what  I  said 
just  now." 

"You  may  try  to  believe  that  you  believe  it,"  he 
acknowledged,  "but  your  heart  tells  you  that  it  isn't 
so." 

"My  heart!  What  do  you  know  about  my  heart? 
When  I  meet  one  single  man  in  all  the  universe  that 
I  can  trust  —  not  merely  say  \  trust " 

"I  don't  doubt,"  Jeremy  interposed,  "that  you 
have  been  unfortunate  in  others.  But  how  can  you 
despair  of  goodness,  so  long  as  there  is  any  in  yourself?" 

"There  isn't  any  in  myself." 

"Ah,  but  you  are  wrong!" 

"What  right  have  you  to  say  that?  What  do  you 
know  about  myself?  How  do  you  know?" 

"I  know,"  he  answered,  "because  in  my  own  heart 
there  are  places  —  places,"  he  confessed,  "that  I 
would  not  be  ashamed  to  have  you  see.  Have  I  any 
right  to  suppose  that  there  are  not  those  places  in 
others  also?" 

And  as  she  was  silent,  he  added  musingly: 


i92    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"The  unexplored  country  seems  to  be  within  us. 
It  is  a  strange  country,  and  we  know  very  little  about 
it  yet;  only,  the  more  one  travels  there,  the  more  it 
seems  to  be  one's  native  land  —  it  is  so  full  of  hope." 

"You  have  been  very  fortunate,"  she  murmured. 
"How  happy  you  must  be!" 

Jeremy  was  silent. 

"  You  are  one  of  those  lucky  persons,"  she  continued, 
"whom  the  fairies  and  the  angels  watch,  and  the  stars 
guide.  Who  never  know  pain  or  failure  —  or  wrong 
—  or  tears.  I  have  heard  of  such  persons.  But  1 
never  met  one  before." 

And  she  added,  bitterly: 

"It  is  easy  for  you  to  have  faith  in  things!" 

"Perhaps,"  he  answered,  "it  is  not  so  easy  as  you 
think." 

"Ah,  yes,  I  know.  You  said  that  you  were  sad,  and 
lonely.  You  feel  sadness;  but  you  don't  know  sadness. 
Or  loneliness.  You  don't  know  struggle,  and  pain, 
and  wrong,  and  fear.  Some  day,  perhaps,  you  will 
be  deserted  by  all  those  lovely  hopes  of  yours;  and  the 
world  that  you  talk  of  will  seem  very  far  away  from 
you,  then,  and  like  a  dream  .  .  .  Then  you  will 
know!" 

They  were  both  silent.    And  then,  suddenly,  to 


WAYFARERS  193 

his  astonishment,  she  arose  and  gave  her  hand  to  him, 
in  token  of  surrender. 

"Well,"  she  said  to  him,  with  charming  candour, 
and  in  that  former,  kindlier  voice,  "I'll  begin  all  over 
again  —  by  believing  in  you!" 

She  felt  his  hands  tremble  at  her  touch. 

"You  must  do  nothing  so  —  foolish!"  he  protested. 

"All!"  she  laughed  softly.  "So  it  seems  that  I  am 
not  to  trust  you,  after  all!" 

Jeremy  was  silent.  And  she  divined,  easily  enough, 
what  manner  of  silence  it  was  that  held  him  —  one 
of  those  crucial  silences  in  which  a  voice,  or  the  merest 
shadow  of  a  voice,  may  end  the  balance,  once,  and 
sometimes  forever. 

"But  how,  then,  shall  I  begin  all  over  again,"  she 
asked  plaintively,  "if  I  cannot  believe  in  you?  You, 
of  all  men  —  an  idealist!" 

The  silence  was  profound. 

"By  believing  in  yourself!"  he  at  last  made  answer 
in  a  desperate  voice. 

"Bab!"  she  cried,  petulantly,  jerking  her  hand  away. 
"I  tell  you,  you  don't  know  anything  about  myself! 
I  didn't  come  here " 

She  whipped  out  a  cigarette,  and  lighted  it,  so  that 
for  an  instant,  while  the  match  was  flaming,  her  face. 


194    THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

with  all  its  scorn,  but  all  its  lingering  and  still  hopeful 
youth  as  well,  was  suddenly  revealed  to  him.  And 
then,  in  the  shadows  again,  as  she  leaned  back  against 
the  open  window,  her  defiant  head  was  outlined  against 
the  sky. 

"I  didn't  come  here  to  be  believed  in.  And,  for 
that  matter,  you  seemed  just  now  a  little  doubtful  of 
yourself!" 

"1  know!"  he  answered;  and  his  shame  touched  in 
her  heart  those  very  chords  that  she  denied.  "I 
didn't  say,"  he  reminded  her,  "that  faith  in  one's 
self  was  easy.  And  it  was  you,  remember,  who  said 
that  I  didn't  know  .  .  .  what  struggle  was!" 

"Yes,"  she  acknowledged  .  .  .  "and  I  was 
wrong." 

With  exquisite  care  —  as  if  it  were  the  very  silence 
that  she  feared  to  break  —  she  laid  down  her  ciga- 
rette. 

"Nevertheless,"  she  told  him,  giving  him  her  hand 
again  in  new  surrender,  and  in  farewell,  "I  shall 
begin  just  as  I  said  I  would!  Yes!"  she  insisted  —  and 
he  never  knew  that  she  was  crying  softly  to  herself  — 
"by  believing  .  .  .  in  the  first  idealist  ...  I 
ever  met!" 


ANGELS 

THOSE  fourteen  days  in  which  he  was  to  find 
himself,  who  never  would  be  aught  but  what 
he  was  and  had  been  always  from  the  begin- 
ning, were  quickly  past.     But  Time  was  kind  to  him: 
kinder  than  man.    Jeremy  awoke  to  find  a  fifteenth 
day  —  and  then  a  sixteenth.    While  there  was  light  to 
dawn,  even  though  it  always  faded,  it  was  yet  too 
early  to  despair. 

He  had  been  sending  out  those  old  neglected  manu- 
scripts again,  and  while,  in  their  former  fashion,  they 
were  coming  home  to  him,  still,  faithful  to  his  dream  of 
authorship,  he  was  sitting  there  under  the  eaves, 
waiting,  waiting  —  waiting  in  light,  and  waiting  in 
darkness  —  before  that  blank  white  paper  of  his  story- 
less  and  unromantic,  unheroic  hope. 

And  it  was  curious,  then  —  one  of  those  spiritual 
ironies  of  life  akin  to  its  outward  and  visible  derisions 
—  that,  pen  in  hand,  in  this  eleventh  hour  of  his  need, 
'95 


196   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

his  desperate  and  tortured  mind  could  conjure  up  for 
him  nothing  but  the  airiest  phantasies  —  mere  butter- 
flies of  thought,  that,  in  pretty  little  sunlit  scenes  of 
peace  and  joy,  flitted,  here  and  there,  among  the 
fragrant  flowers  of  his  fancy.  Even  while  the  active 
world  roared  warnings  from  below,  or  when  he  started 
up  involuntarily  from  his  chair  at  some  apparition  of 
remembrance  —  some  grim  reminder  that  time  would 
not  be  always  kind,  and  that  a  day  of  reckoning  was 
at  hand  —  Jeremy  would  dip  his  pen  and  nerve  himself 
again  with  set  teeth  and  frowning  determination,  only 
to  visualize  some  tranquil  garden  —  some  bliss  of  life, 
sequestered  from  its  storm!  Pictures  of  country 
quiet,  of  little  rivers  meandering  in  meadows,  of  roofs 
and  towers  among  distant  trees,  and  youthful  lovers 
under  hawthorn  boughs:  all  these  returned  to  him 
out  of  forgotten  dreams.  They  were  those  English 
vistas  that  he  had  seen  while  yet  a  lad,  in  Toodlum- 
shire,  looking  up  from  the  pages  of  old  English  verse, 
to  wish  and  wonder.  And  now  when,  a  lad  no  longer 
among  the  bees  and  roses,  he  faced  what  men  face, 
there,  in  his  city  cell,  back  they  came  again,  unsum- 
moned;  and  still  so  beautiful,  and  so  useless  for  any 
purpose  of  the  hour,  for  any  story  but  his  own !  Haunt- 
ing visions  of  the  peace  men  dream  of  from  the  first, 


ANGELS  197 

and  seek  unto  the  end,  and  find  sometimes  —  but  not 
in  the  gardens  which  they  saw  as  boys. 

Perhaps,  however,  they  were  not  so  purposeless  as 
they  had  seemed:  those  pretty,  little,  wistful  dreams 
of  earthly  refuge  from  care  and  sorrow.  It  was,  from 
the  first,  their  very  uselessness,  and  hopelessness,  and 
that  very  irony  of  their  comparison  with  all  the  un- 
lovely and  unkempt  realities  of  life,  so  utterly  un- 
gardenlike,  that  had  made  him  turn  from  them  at 
last,  in  pain,  only  to  discern  in  joy  his  first  dim  visions 
of  a  surer  sanctuary.  And  now,  once  more,  it  was 
their  very  mockery  that  was  kind  to  him  —  the  un- 
timeliness  of  their  sad  reminders  that  made  him  turn, 
and  turn  again,  to  visions  of  greener  pastures  and 
stiller  waters.  For,  in  this  valley  of  the  shadow,  as 
he  sought  for  light  in  the  wisdom  that  other  men  had 
found  in  darkness,  nothing  they  had  ever  said,  or  sung, 
brought  half  the  cheer  that  shone  for  him  in  words 
that,  as  a  little  child,  he  had  been  permitted  to  recite 
each  morning  in  the  school  at  Toodlums.  They 
were  not  the  wisdom  that  was  taught  there,  day  by 
day,  class  by  class,  room  by  room,  carefully,  insistently, 
as  essential  armour  for  these  battles  with  the  world. 
They  were  but  slight  concessions  to  an  ancient  but 
now  doubtful  faith,  not  indeed  to  be  taught  at  all 


198   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

on  pain  of  popular  displeasure,  but  of  which  some 
frugal  morsels  now  and  then  might  do  no  harm, 
perhaps,  before  the  real  work  of  the  day  began. 

But,  now,  in  another  of  life's  kindly  ironies,  face 
to  face  with  the  ancient  problem  of  existence,  every 
book  that  he  had  ever  laboured  over  —  all  those 
studies  in  which,  one  proud  spring  day,  he  had  been 
pronounced  proficient,  and  ready  for  the  world,  and  all 
those  others  that  he  had  loved — were  dumb!  To  his 
troubled  mind,  the  brightest  jewels  among  all  its  treas- 
ures now  were  words  that  he  had  learned  by  rote 

The  Lord  is  my  shepherd;  I  shall  not  want   .   .    . 

For  as  he  told  them  over,  word  by  word,  bead  by 
bead  in  the  rosary  of  remembrance,  their  ancient 
loveliness  seemed  now  a  music  not  of  speech,  but  life! 
It  was  not  his  own  voice  merely  that  he  heard.  It 
was  the  voice  of  Man,  from  the  beginning,  singing 
out  of  age-long  joy  and  sorrow,  that  childlike  chant. 
Singing  in  innocence  —  not  any  longer  in  ignorance  of 
life,  but  in  that  wisdom  of  it  which  men  call  Faith :  a 
diviner  innocence  to  which  they,  spiritually,  are  born 
again;  and  in  which,  as  children  of  a  childhood  that 
need  never  vanish,  an  eternal  kingdom  has  been  prom- 
ised them. 


ANGELS  199 

Even  the  darkness  had  not  been  purposeless  if  this 
light,  which  was  born  of  it,  was  true.  Words  never 
meant  so  much  to  him  before.  If  untrue  —  well,  then 
.  .  .  but  they  were  not  untrue!  As  men  say, 
Something  told  him  that.  Something  strangely  swift 
and  tender,  winging  its  unseen  way  out  of  the  inmost 
silence;  lighting  as  it  came  his  troubled  thoughts,  until 
they  shone;  and  as  it  stayed,  calming  their  strife,  and 
the  very  beating  of  his  heart,  until,  in  stillness,  he 
could  hear  again  those  voices  which  are  lost  in  storm. 
It  was  that  shining  Something  that  always  came  to 
him  in  eleventh  hours,  when  the  last  mere  reasonable 
hope  had  fled.  Something  final,  that  had  never 
failed  him  yet;  that  would  not  leave  him  in  extremity, 
nor  let  him  go.  And  in  answer  to  whose  watch  and 
ward  his  wistful  life  had  found  a  voice  at  last  in  words 
that  he  repeated  as  a  child,  telling  them  over  as  aves 
and  paternosters  of  his  helplessness. 

And  if  the  psalm  was  true,  then  he  was  safe!  Now, 
and  always  —  in  green  pastures,  and  beside  still 
waters;  yea,  but  in  valleys,  also,  of  the  shadows  of  all 
those  deaths  men  die  to  find  themselves,  he  need  have 
no  fear.  Not  even  in  ibis  darkness,  ibis  silence,  in 
which  he  waited  —  this  risk  and  recklessness  in  which 
he  hazarded  his  life  and  love,  all  that  was  dear  to  him, 


200  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

in  the  adventure  of  a  last  fond  faith  —  and  felt  again 
the  first  faint  thrill,  and  saw  once  more  the  dawning 
glamour,  of  Romance! 

These,  verily,  are  they  to  whom  the  angels  minister: 
who  are  led  through  days  of  weariness  by  clouds,  and 
through  nights  of  anguish  by  pillars  of  strange  fire; 
and  who  are  fed  with  manna  in  the  wilderness.  For, 
there  where  no  human  footfall  was  ever  heard,  and 
where  the  very  beating  of  his  heart  was  of  the  outer 
world — there  where  the  real  Jeremy,  as  Barbara  had 
seen,  was  some  one  nobler  even  than  that  ideal  Jeremy 
of  his  earthly  quest  — who  but  angels  could  have  found 
their  way  to  him?  And  if  not  angels,  who  were  They 
that  took  each  night  from  him,  upon  his  knees,  those 
dying  hopes  of  his,  and  gave  them  back  again,  restored 
to  life,  against  the  morrow? 


To  those  who  knew  —  Barbara  as  yet  knew  nothing 
—  it  seemed  sheer  madness,  his  waiting  there,  day 
after  day,  striving  with  those  foolish  pages  —  filling 
them  desperately,  if  only  to  see  some  mark,  some 
sign  upon  them  of  what  he  waited  for;  but  only  to 
crush  them  in  his  hands  at  last,  and  wait  again,  and 
strive,  and  wait,  day  after  day,  before  that  blank  white 


ANGELS  201 

surface  of  mere  hope.  And  it  was  now  that  they 
began  to  find  those  verdicts,  which,  according  to  their 
lights,  still  lie  like  shadows  upon  his  memory.  He 
was  a  dreamer,  an  illusionist,  a  child,  a  fool.  To  all 
their  counsels  he  listened  helplessly.  From  all  their 
silences,  so  much  more  eloquent  with  scorn  or  pity 
than  any  words  they  uttered,  he  turned  away  into 
that  silence  of  his  own.  What  he  saw  there,  or  what 
he  heard,  they  could  not  guess. 

But  they  were  strangely  moved. 

"If  he  wants  to  make  a  fool  of  himself,"  one  of 
them  protested  wrathfully,  "I  can't  help  it.  I've 
done  what  I  could.  I've  warned,  I've  lectured  him. 
I've  told  him  what  to  do  to  save  himself.  Yet  he  goes 
on  living  in  his  fool's  paradise.  What  right  has  he  to 
make  me  care?" 

The  speaker  paused.  Slowly  a  puzzled  look  came 
into  his  defiant  eyes,  which  lost  their  anger;  his  voice 
was  softened. 

"  But  I  do  care.    That's  what  I  cannot  understand." 

That  was  what  none  could  understand,  just  yet  — 
the  mystery  of  those  silent,  those  insistent,  never  to  be 
quite  stifled  promptings  from  within,  to  rescue  one  who 
had  no  further  claim  upon  them  before  the  law  of  men! 
For  it  was  not  mere  pity.  They  pitied  many  whom 


202  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

they  felt  no  charge  to  keep  from  sorrow  or  disaster. 
Why,  indeed,  should  they  care  so  much?  Here  was 
but  one  more  failure  in  a  busy  world;  and  the  folly  was 
his  own. 

Yet  they  did  care! 

It  was  as  if  —  one  likes  to  think  thus  of  it  —  Some 
one  cared,  Who  had  given  His  angels  charge  concerning 
him :  so  that  the  hearts  of  men  were  stirred  and  troubled 
by  presences  that  were  all  unseen,  and  by  unheard 
voices  that  would  not  cease,  lest,  in  his  helplessness, 
he  dash  his  foot  against  a  stone! 

One  Sunday  there  came  a  knock  upon  his  door. 
Jeremy  opened  it  to  find,  to  his  surprise,  his  friend  the 
Editor.  Yet  not  the  Editor.  In  the  kindly  but  hesi- 
tating figure  that  crossed  his  threshold,  and  that  sat, 
awkwardly,  and  rather  silently  at  first,  in  Barbara's 
chair,  it  was  hard  to  realize  the  monarch  of  affairs 
before  whom  Jeremy  had  always  trembled.  Now, 
indeed,  it  was  the  Editor  who  was  ill  at  ease,  and  who 
stammered  in  his  speech. 

"I  was  passing,"  he  explained,  "and  just  dropped 
in  — "  which  was  not  quite  true.  "I  thought  I'd  inquire 
how  you  were  getting  on." 

"Oh,"  Jeremy  made  answer,  "things  look  more 
hopeful  now." 


ANGELS  203 

"You  have  found  a  place?" 

"No." 

"You  have  one  in  view,  perhaps?" 

"No.     I  meant " 

He  brushed  an  imaginary  speck  upon  his  coat,  and 
added  slowly, 

"—that  I  had  found  myself!" 

Both  were  silent.  Then  the  Editor  remarked  sug- 
gestively, 

"You  are  writing,  I  see." 

"Yes.    .    .    .    Always  writing." 

Jeremy  smiled,  with  a  furtive  glance  at  the  crumpled 
papers  on  the  table  and  on  the  floor.  It  was  a  half- 
embarrassed,  half-defiant  smile.  And  there  was  another 
pause  in  which  the  elder  man  gazed  helplessly  at  the 
younger,  who  looked  very  white  and  worn,  he  thought, 
like  one  who  had  rather  lost  than  found  himself.  He 
was  not  unkempt;  he  was  clean  and  shaven.  But 
there  were  deep  lines  about  the  mouth  and  between 
the  faded  eyes,  which  were  strained  and  swollen. 

"I  have  caught  cold,"  Jeremy  explained  in  answer 
to  the  other's  inquiry. 

"So  I  see,"  the  Editor  replied,  quietly.  "Writing 
is  a  catarrahal  sort  of  thing,  sometimes." 

Jeremy  surrendered. 


204   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Oh,  something  will  come  of  it!"  he  said  wearily. 
"At  times  one  is  baffled,  of  course.  That's  life,  I 
take  it.  But  there  is  nothing " 

He  looked  up  smilingly. 

"There  is  nothing  final  in  defeat.  That's  what  I 
tell  myself,  over  and  over.  It  is  curious,  isn't  it, 
that  we  should  always  have  to  keep  reminding  our- 
selves of  the  things  that  are  —  helpful?  It  is  the 
hopeless,  the  disheartening  things,  that  are  so  easy 
to  recall." 

And  he  went  on  talking.  It  was  not  so  much  that 
the  Editor  was  inclined  to  silence  now,  as  that  Jeremy 
felt  bound,  somehow,  to  speak  —  partly  for  self- 
expression,  long  pent  up  in  lonely  labour,  and  partly 
doubtless  in  self-defence;  but  partly  also  in  instinctive 
dread  of  what  this  other  man  might  say,  out  of  the 
hard  philosophy  of  success. 

"Life's  an  adventure,"  Jeremy  soliloquized,  with  a 
strange  half-light  in  his  eyes  and  smile.  It  was  — 
prematurely  in  one  so  young  —  that  twilight  which 
is  sometimes  to  be  seen  in  faces,  when  invading 
shadows  have  conquered  life's  blaze  and  heat,  but 
pause,  baffled  by  a  remnant  glow  that  will  not  yield 
itself,  nor  die,  but  that  lingers  on,  illumining  the  night. 
It  is  a  kind  of  starlight. 


ANGELS  205 

"I  am  just  beginning,"  Jeremy  confessed,  slowly, 
idling  with  his  pen,  "to  see  the — the  drama  and 
romance  of  life:  this  struggling  on,  sword  in  hand, 
and  wounded  sometimes,  and  mighty  weak,  against 
.  .  .  Once  seeing  it,  of  course  —  once  catching  it, 
I  mean,  the " 

He  groped  vaguely  for  the  word.  ' 

"  —the  nobility,"  he  said  at  last,  "even  in  the  things 
we  call  ignoble;  in  the  commonplace  and  prose  of 
life  —  you  know  what  I  mean.  Once  catching  gleams 
where  everything,  we  thought,  was  shadow;  once 
seeing  life  as  a  splendid  and  mysterious  quest,  and 
man  as " 

He  paused  again,  and  the  glow  deepened  in  his 
careworn  face,  so  that  it  lost  its  homeliness. 

"God's  own  knight!"  he  said,  breathlessly.  "Once 
seeing  that,  one  knows  what  one  must  do!  Fight  on, 
and " 

He  dropped  his  eyes. 

" —  fail,  perhaps  —  it  is  the  lot  of  some.  But  never 
yield,  never  surrender! " 

His  pale  face  flushed  a  little  under  the  Editor's 
silent  scrutiny. 

"It  isn't  egotism;  it  isn't  bravado,"  he  declared. 
"  I  know  that  1  am  one  of  the  least  knightly  of  men, 


206  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

one  of  the  weakest  vessels  of  so  high  a  chivalry.  One 
that  some  dragon  will  be  gulping  down,  perhaps,  one 
of  these  days  —  flesh  and  blood  —  but  not  quite  all 
of  me.  I'll  warrant  there'll  be  something  left,  to 
fight  on  —  somewhere.  But  at  any  rate  —  ibis  is  the 
point,"  he  said,  looking  the  other  straight  and  steadily 
in  the  eyes,  and  speaking  now  in  that  exalted  and 
unanswerable  tone  which  men  never  use  save  in  their 
high  decisions,  "  I  have  made  up  my  mind.  Right  or 
wrong,  I  have  made  up  my  mind  about  life  — forever! 
It's  my  last  dream.  And  if  I'm  wrong  .  .  .  well, 
if  I'm  wrong,"  he  added  passionately,  "all  I  can  say  is, 
I'd  rather  be  Man,  and  go  down  to  mockery  and  defeat 
in  an  error  so  supremely  beautiful,  than  be  the  God  of 
any  scheme  of  things  less  kind  and  fair!" 

"Ladd,"  said  the  Editor,  for  Jeremy  was  silent  now 
—  now  that  he  had  set  up  his  standard,  so  to  speak,  and 
given  warning  that  he  would  not  compromise  with  life, 
whatever  it  might  do  with  him  —  "Ladd,"  said  the 
Editor,  very  gently,  like  a  father  speaking  to  a  son 
whom  he  at  once  admonishes  and  admires,  "I  think 
you're  right.  You've  found  the  epic  where  you  used 
to  find  the  lyric  life.  And  now  the  practical  question 
is,  What  is  your  sword!  Your  sword?" 

He  hesitated. 


ANGELS  207 

"Is  it,"  he  asked  at  last,  striving  to  temper  doubt 
with  his  compassion  —  speaking  with  downcast  eyes, 
and  in  a  lowered  voice,  as  if,  in  this  sanctuary  of  a 
young  man's  faith,  he  was  fearful  lest  a  word  or  a 
mis-tone  might  mar  some  irrevocable  loveliness  —  "is 
it,  are  you  sure,  your  pen?" 

Jeremy  was  silent.  He  rose  and  walked  across 
the  room,  standing  for  a  moment,  with  his  back  to 
the  questioner.  Then  he  turned  and  came  back 
slowly  to  the  table  littered  with  his  futile  toil;  and 
seeing  it,  he  could  not  trust  his  voice  at  first.  But 
presently  he  said  huskily, 

"It's  the  only  sword  I  know!" 

The  Editor  was  silent.  Finally  he  arose,  an3 
placing  his  hands  on  Jerry's  shoulders, 

"My  boy,"  he  said,  "I  don't  know  what  to  say,  or 
do,  for  you.  You  are  one  of  those  men  that  the  world 
never  does  know  what  to  make  of,  but  is  bound, 
somehow,  in  spite  of  everything,  to  respect  and  love; 
and  leave,  more  or  less,  to  the  mercy  of  the  angels  — 
if  there  are  angels!  I'm  blest  if  I  know.  I've  never 
believed  in  them,  myself.  But  if  there  are " 

He  smiled,  and  there  was  a  suspicion  of  moisture 
in  his  eyes  as  with  a  kind  of  rude  tenderness  he  shook 
Jeremy,  in  token  of  affection  and  farewell. 


208  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"Well,  if  there  are,  why — you  are  the  kind  of  fellow 
they'll  take  care  of!  I'm  sure  of  that." 

He  went  away,  suddenly,  as  he  had  come.  After 
he  was  gone,  Jeremy,  turning  sadly  to  his  work  again, 
saw  among  his  papers  a  sum  of  money!  In  his  amaze- 
ment, his  first  thought  was  to  call.  .  .  .  But  it 
had  not  been  lost. 

In  one  sense  it  was  little.  But  in  another,  measured 
by  the  secret  need  of  that  eleventh  hour  —  not  by  its 
darkness,  merely,  which  had  been  seen,  but  by  its 
unguessed  hunger  of  starved  flesh  and  blood  —  it 
was  so  much,  he  wept ! 

Angels  indeed !  —  knocking  unasked,  unwelcome, 
from  door  to  door,  from  heart  to  heart;  and  at  their 
opening,  and  before  they  can  be  shut  again,  flooding 
them  with  light  of  a  divine  compassion,  so  that  men 
find  themselves,  even  against  will  and  reason,  loving 
their  neighbour  as  themselves! 

in 

In  his  own  way  —  that  timid,  childlike,  unwordly, 
unpractical  way  which  is  so  inexplicable  and  con- 
temptible to  men  who  fall  upon  their  feet,  who  never 
are  at  a  loss  to  make  themselves  useful  to  their  fellows, 
or  their  fellows  useful  to  themselves  —  Jeremy  was 


ANGELS  209 

groping  for  employment.  The  truth  was,  he  had  no 
imagination  in  these  material  things.  His  visions 
were  of  nothing  that  is  made  with  hands.  Men 
looked  askance  at  him.  Just  what  was  alien  in  him 
he  could  not  tell,  any  more  than  they;  but  he  noticed 
that  they  eyed  him  curiously,  and  listened  to  him 
silently,  as  if  he  were  a  stranger.  He  would  have  been 
amazed,  had  he  been  told  that  he  did  not  even  speak 
their  language!  Yet  it  was  true.  They  would  have 
better  understood  him,  had  he  come  to  them  in  their 
homes,  instead  of  in  their  shops  and  offices;  if  he 
could  have  appealed  to  them  in  those  quiet  places 
where  they  kept  their  secret  treasures,  which  neither 
moth,  nor  rust,  nor  thieves  might  touch,  and  where 
even  the  sternest  of  them  were  sometimes  children. 
There  he  would  have  been  at  home:  more  at  home 
even  than  themselves.  His  genius  was  for  intimacy. 
His  errors  were  of  the  market-places,  never  of  the 
shrines  of  life.  For  sanctuaries,  seen  and  unseen, 
he  had  the  gifts  both  of  speech  and  silence. 

Perhaps  already  he  was  employed.  Perhaps  he 
had  been  employed  always,  from  the  first,  and  would 
be  employed  until  the  end  —  or,  at  least,  so  long  as 
he  could  keep  that  light  of  faith  which  transfigured 
his  futility  —  giving,  for  that  was  what  he  did,  what 


210  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

other  shrewder  men  contrive  to  sell.  If  this  was  so, 
he  was  not  aware  of  it.  He  was  looking  still  for  a 
kingdom  more  visible  than  that.  He  only  knew  that, 
coming  each  morning  into  the  market-place,  at  whose 
more  fragrant  stalls  men  buy  a  little,  now  and  then, 
of  the  produce  of  kings'  gardens,  though  warily  and 
according  to  the  fancy  of  the  hour,  he  had  found  no 
purchasers.  Jeremy,  no  more  than  the  rest  of  us,  in 
those  days  took  account  of  what  he  gave  away,  freely, 
in  the  sheer  joy  of  giving,  along  the  road.  Treasures 
of  the  spirit,  which  come  from  mystery  and  go  in 
mystery;  which  come  from  the  illumined  silences,  and 
go  in  the  light  of  them  men  shed  in  passing.  So  it 
was  with  him,  though  he  never  dreamed  of  it.  What- 
ever his  life  had  touched,  it  had  illumined,  though 
with  unmarketable  light.  And  in  this  last  stand, 
waiting  for  his  hidden  fate,  daring  he  knew  not  what, 
in  that  spirit  of  divine  adventure  which  some  call  mad- 
ness and  some  call  faith,  he  had  found  himself  again, 
who  never  would  be  aught  but  what  he  was  and  had 
been  always,  from  the  beginning.  For  always  he  had 
met  each  challenge  of  vicissitude  with  some  new  and 
chastened,  but  fragile  and,  as  it  always  seemed, 
perishable  dream  of  life  —  a  new  dream  for  each  new 
chapter  of  experience.  And  always  his  latest  hope 


ANGELS  an 

and  view,  when  once  it  had  dawned  upon  his  darkness, 
putting  it  to  flight,  was  a  fairer,  more  extended  pros- 
pect, than  ever  he  had  seen  before. 

It  was  an  old,  old  road  that  he  was  journeying  —  the 
ancient  way  of  the  idealist :  defying  fate,  and,  though 
defeated,  defeated  always  on  his  own  high  ground; 
and  ever  higher,  so  that  each  new  reverse  but  marks 
a  progress  and  ascent  to  some  nobler  level  of  adversity, 
until  the  final  failure  —  and  its  Easter  song! 

As  the  Editor  had  said,  Jeremy  was  one  of  those  men 
whom  the  world  never  does  know  what  to  make  of. 
For,  not  being  cast  in  an  heroic  mould,  there  was  no 
melodrama  to  arouse  their  latent  sympathies,  in  his 
silent  battlefields,  his  quiet  life,  and  its  veiled  adven- 
tures. Those  who  were  nearest  only  dimly  guessed. 
And  Jeremy  himself,  in  spite  of  his  dawning  vision 
of  the  divine  romance  which  is  in  every  life,  however 
humble,  because  his  own  life  was  not  what  he  had 
dreamed  it  would  be,  never  really  dreamed  of  what  it 
was.  All  men  live  stories;  some  men  see  them;  fewer 
write  them.  But  for  all  of  these,  life  is  but  an  hour, 
vision  but  a  glimpse,  and  words  but  echoes  of  reality. 

The  world  which  lay  below  his  fairer  life,  like  a 
modern  city  seen  from  the  terraces  of  the  ancient 
hills  —  man's  world,  transient,  but  to  be  sternly 


212  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

reckoned  with  until  he  came  into  his  royal  heritage 
—  was  now  as  strange  and  disconcerting  as  an  evil 
dream.  Time  had  but  deepened  the  sense  of  his  alien 
presence  there;  so  that,  more  and  more,  he  had  with- 
drawn into  those  garden  silences  that  were  always 
home  to  him.  Life  had  dawned  upon  him  in  a  reverie; 
in  a  reverie  it  was  vanishing. 

"He  ought  to  have  been  endowed,"  some  one  re- 
marked, sadly.  "No  poor  man  can  afford  to  muse. 
He  must  be  up  and  doing." 

The  hour  was  late,  but  Jeremy  himself  had  wakened 
to  this  truth.  Up  and  doing  were  what  he  wished  to 
be,  with  all  his  soul  —  but  how?  He  had  tried  to  do; 
was  striving  still  in  the  only  way  whose  mysteries 
he  knew,  a  little.  And  all  that  he  accomplished 
were  clearer  visions,  farther  vistas,  nobler  dreams 
of  a  life  in  which  he  found  no  foothold  that  he  could 
call  his  own ! 

It  was  not  strange  that,  in  his  bewilderment, 
he  turned  gratefully  to  the  night,  in  which  man's 
world  was  hushed,  and  all  that  din  of  merciless  re- 
minders faded  away  into  a  starlit  reverie  like  his 
own.  He  longed  for  it  to  come,  welcomed  its  refuge 
of  concealing  shadows  and  opiate  sleep;  and  when  he 
woke,  turned  sadly  from  the  light  of  another  futile 


ANGELS  213 

morning,  not  in  indolence  but  in  sheer  despair,  closing 
his  eyes  again,  and  striving  to  drift  back  into  that 
kind  oblivion.  Forgetfulness  —  man  always  turns  to 
it  when  knowledge  fails.  Since  Jeremy  could  find 
no  answer  to  the  riddle  of  his  inefficiency,  only  to  be 
deaf  to  it  would  be  enough!  Blind,  seemingly,  he 
had  always  been.  Now,  also,  he  was  growing  dumb. 
He  spoke  no  more  of  that  final  faith  of  his,  which, 
like  all  others  that  he  had  known,  seemed  only  to 
have  beguiled  him  deeper  still  into  a  folly  that  ap- 
peared predestined,  it  was  so  inextricably  woven  into 
the  very  fabric  of  his  soul.  Always  he  had  failed. 
In  that,  at  least,  his  life  had  been  consistent.  AH 
those  pretty  little  coloured  lights  of  youth  —  will  o' 
the  wisps  of  sentiment  and  yearning;  and  all  these 
later,  nobler  stars,  that  lead  the  strong  unto  the 
heights,  had  only  mired  him  —  as  if  high  truth  for 
some  might  be  for  others  valleys  of  destruction. 

And  there  had  been  no  escape.  However  he  had 
turned,  however  he  had  groped  always  for  ascent, 
step  by  step,  all  the  long  way  that  he  had  come,  he 
had  descended!  For  here,  upon  the  brink  of  unknown 
depths  whose  quicksands  sank  beneath  his  feet,  he 
saw  those  solid  heights  that  he  had  climbed;  and  lo! 
—  they  were  but  pale  hill-shadows  in  fatal  waters. 


2i4  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Even  when  he  roused  himself,  and  told  himself 
defiantly  that  he  was  wrong;  that  truth  for  the  strong 
was  truth  for  the  weak  as  well,  and  that  the  psalm 
was  true;  that  the  Shepherd  of  lost  sheep  would  rescue 
him  at  last,  all  in  good  time,  if  he  would  trust  and 
wait  —  it  was  as  if  the  voice  were  not  his  own.  It 
was  so  faint  and  far.  Or  now,  perhaps,  he  was  too 
tired  to  listen  any  longer. 

If  he  could  sleep  —  that  would  be  divine  com- 
passion now.  All  that  he  would  ask  of  any  shepherd: 
to  be  permitted  to  lie  down  beside  still  waters,  and 
never  rise,  never  know  again  this  weary  wakefulness. 

But  when  he  did  sleep  —  from  exhaustion  — his  head 
nodding  as  he  wrote,  until  at  last  it  sank  down,  down, 
among  those  white  certificates  of  failure,  resting  at 
last  upon  his  folded  arms,  it  was  not  forgetfulness. 
Haunted,  in  anxious  dreams,  by  phantoms  of  futility 
—  preposterous  crises  of  a  troubled  fancy  in  which  he 
was  forever  struggling,  but  in  vain,  to  break  some  bond 
that  held  him  like  a  vise,  while  all  the  world  looked  on, 
aloof  and  smiling,  watching  curiously  to  see  how  it  would 
end,  and  if  his  heart  would  break!  —  he  would  awake, 
starting  up,  trembling  and  weak  with  strife,  and  cold 
with  fear,  only  to  strive  and  fear  again,  in  this  other 
bondage.  Perhaps  it,  also,  was  an  evil  dream! 


ANGELS  215 

Sometimes  he  said  the  psalm  mechanically.  Merely 
to  speak  faith  seemed  to  revive  it,  faintly,  even  in 
despair.  Once,  in  some  sheer  reaction  of  spent  nerves, 
he  rose  suddenly  from  his  chair,  and  seizing  the  half- 
written  sheets  before  him,  tore  them  into  shreds. 
He  was  a  failure.  Well,  then,  he  would  be  a  failure. 
He  would  accept  his  fate,  and  drink  it  to  the  dregs. 
He  would  defy  not  only  man,  but  God  himself!  He 
could  understand  why,  in  defeat,  men  turned  to 
wantonness.  And  if  it  but  hastened  an  inevitable 
destruction,  was  it  not  better  than  to  die  this  lingering 
death?  It  had,  at  least,  the  virtue  of  activity.  Unlike 
this  passive  grovelling  in  the  dust,  it  did  not  await 
the  end,  but  went  forth  to  meet  it  with  a  certain  grace 
and  heroism  in  its  defiance.  There  was  drama  in  it 
that  men  could  see,  and  pity;  and  romance,  which, 
in  good  or  evil,  is  only  to  be  found  in  risk  and  reck- 
lessness. 

But  even  as  he  thought  of  this,  Jeremy  was  piecing 
together  the  papers  in  his  hand.  He  knew  —  Some- 
thing told  him  —  that  that  alternative  was  not  for  him. 
For  him,  always,  courage  and  gallantry,  whether  in 
victory  or  defeat,  would  be  obscure,  hidden  from 
the  world  in  noiseless  battlefields  like  this;  challenge 
and  defiance,  for  good  or  evil,  would  be  untrumpeted; 


216  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

he  must  rise,  or  fall,  in  the  patience  and  the  lonely 
silence  of  his  dreams. 

Truth  to  tell,  Jeremy  was  already  dying  to  that 
outer  world,  in  which  he  always  had  been  a  stranger. 
This  numbness  in  which  he  sat,  dazed  and  motionless, 
in  his  room,  vaguely  aware  of  time  and  place,  and 
mechanically  responsive  to  its  few  demands,  was  that 
same  detachment  which  come  to  most  men  in  old  age. 
Life  seemed  to  be  closing  in  around  him.  What  little 
of  the  world  was  left  was  but  a  darkened  garden  of 
dim  thoughts,  memories  mostly,  in  which  he  waited 
for  he  knew  not  what  —  it  did  not  matter  —  but  it 
was  coming  soon.  Still  he  could  reason  —  but  no 
longer  care.  The  room,  the  table,  the  very  chair  in 
which  he  sat,  seemed  foolish  things.  He  wondered 
why  they  had  ever  mattered;  how,  ever,  he  could 
have  been  concerned  with  them;  why  he  should  have 
noticed  even  the  little  flaws  and  colours  in  them.  He 
even  touched  them  to  be  quite  sure,  and  with  a  mild , 
a  mental  and  unemotional  surprise,  that  they  were 
there.  He  wondered  what  time  it  was;  but  that,  of 
all  things,  was  the  least.  Sleeping  or  waking,  it  was 
all  a  dream.  Days  came  and  went  —  days  and  days, 
and  days  —  indefinitely.  And  it  seemed  so  natural  to 
be  there,  alone.  Quite  peaceful  to  be  by  himself. 


ANGELS  217 

It  was  all  so  simple  —  not  to  be  striving,  or  planning, 
or  hoping,  any  more. 

He  had  been  all  wrong.  Even  the  flowers  on  the 
wall,  that  he  had  thought  so  ugly,  were  really  lovely 
when  he  came  to  look  at  them:  friendly  things,  nodding 
and  smiling  in  the  wind,  and  beautifully  reflected 
in  the  waters.  It  came  to  him  that  these  were  those 
"still  waters"  that  he  had  heard  of,  long  ago.  One 
could  lie  down  beside  them,  and  be  quite  content. 
So  perfectly  at  rest  that  it  was  not  worth  while  to  go 
and  see  if  the  brickyard  was  still  there,  below  the 
bridge.  It  had  been  burned  anyway.  He  ought 
to  let  them  know  at  the  Gazette.  Perhaps  he  would 
—  some  day.  Not  now.  This  was  a  holiday.  All  day 
long,  and  to-morrow  —  if  he  liked,  forever  —  he  had 
only  to  lie  still  and  listen  to  his  thoughts,  and  watch 
the  cloud-drift  and  the  lilies.  They  were  strange 
lilies  —  lilies,  and  not-lilies.  There  were  thousands 
of  them  —  thousands;  and  they  grew  upon  a  wall. 
And  in  their  midst  —  while  he  was  watching  them,  and 
wondering  —  suddenly  a  door  opened. 

Through  it,  with  a  cry  of  joy,  all  that  lost  world 
of  sense  surged  in  upon  him,  encircling  him  with  the 
warm,  kind  arms  of  love!  .  .  . 

Barbara  had  come  back  from  Toodlums. 


XI 

WHERE  GARDENS  MEET 

SHE  had  come  hastily,  and  alone,  because  she 
had  been  told  to  come.    Something,  who  or 
what  she  could  not   say,  but   it  was  not  a 
person,  nor  anything  that  he  had  written  or  had  failed 
to  write  —  those  days  and  days  that  he  had  waited 
there  in  silence  had  been  but  hours  after  all  —  Some- 
thing in  her  heart,  she  said,  had  told  her  that   she 
must  come.    And,  in  one  glance,  she  knew  that  Some- 
thing had  been  divinely  kind,  divinely  merciful. 

It  was  not  a  long  illness,  nor  a  fatal,  nor  even  an 
unhappy  one.  For  pain  was  softened  by  delirium; 
and  when  it  vanished,  under  the  ministrations  of 
angelic  care,  the  peace  of  lying  there  so  still  and  cool 
after  the  fire  of  conflict,  and  so  free  —  that  heavy 
hand  lifted  from  his  life  at  last,  so  that  he  could  breathe 
again  —  was  like  nothing  that  he  had  known  since 
childhood.  It  was  as  if  childhood  had  come  back  to 
visit  him.  Once  more  he  could  dream  again,  blameless; 
ai8' 


WHERE  GARDENS  MEET         219 

unmenaced  from  without,  and  from  within  all  un- 
reproached  by  that  ceaseless  warning  to  be  up  and 
doing.  Within,  silence  —  the  silence  of  that  hidden 
garden  with  its  fountain  of  eternal  hope,  and  its  long, 
long  tender  vistas,  from  which  the  mist  had  cleared. 
Without  —  that  silence  of  a  woman's  love. 

Now  too  he  tasted  those  sweets  of  pity  hitherto 
denied.  Friends  —  he  had  never  dreamed  there  were 
so  many  —  left  fruit  and  books,  flowers  to  adorn  his 
room,  and,  better  still,  words  that  were  like  frankin- 
cense and  myrrh  to  him,  and  some  like  gold  that  he 
would  always  treasure.  He  caught  strange  glimpses 
into  walled  gardens  that  he  had  never  guessed.  Men 
whom  he  had  thought  he  knew,  who  had  been  impatient 
or  derisive  of  his  claims  upon  them,  and  who  had 
laughed  to  scorn  all  secret  beauty  and  outward  tender- 
ness of  life,  held  doors  ajar  —  awkwardly,  it  is  true,  but 
with  pathetic  kindness;  doors  that,  creaking  on  their 
rusty  hinges,  disclosed  to  him  paths  and  arbours, 
neglected  and  falling  to  decay,  but  still  abloom  with 
those  hopes  and  faiths  that  are  perennial;  that  will 
not  die,  but  struggle  on,  even  in  desertion  and  forget- 
fulness,  striving  with  little  humble  flowers  to  keep  a 
refuge  for  man's  sure  return,  in  hours  of  his  need. 

Stranger  still  —  to   Barbara   a   tender  mystery  — 


220   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

was  the  kindness  of  that  one  across  the  hall!  She 
had  been  amazed  and  touched  —  shamed,  she  con- 
fessed, humbled  to  her  very  knees,  that  a  stranger 
of  whom  her  thoughts  had  been  so  pitiless,  and  from 
whose  merest  touch  or  glance  she  had  held  herself 
aloof,  could,  when  her  hour  came,  of  need  and  loneli- 
ness, be  so  forgiving  and  so  merciful.  It  was  this 
girl  of  whom  Jeremy  had  been  vaguely  conscious  as  a 
ministering  angel,  with  Barbara;  who,  at  the  first, 
until  he  wakened  to  himself  again  —  when  she  with- 
drew, and  never  afterward  would  venture  nearer 
than  the  door  —  had  shared  with  Barbara  the  long 
night-watches,  and  softened  with  a  mysterious  sym- 
pathy the  pain  of  waiting  and  suspense.  They  had 
mingled  their  very  tears. 

"It  was  when  I  asked  her  why,"  Barbara  related. 
"Why  she  should  care  so  much.  She  shook  her  head; 
and,  all  at  once,  she  burst  out  crying.  She  did  care," 
Barbara  added,  thoughtfully.  "All  I  know  is,  that 
some  one,  once,  had  been  very  kind  to  her.  Some 
man,  it  was.  He  was  not  a  lover.  He  was  just  a  — 
just  a  passerby,  she  said.  But,  since  then,  life  had 
been  very  different.  Somehow  —  she  didn't  say." 

There  were  other  mysteries.  Just  what  it  was  that 
people  owed  to  Jeremy,  none  of  them  could  tell.  It 


WHERE  GARDENS  MEET         221 

was  not  money.  It  was  not  counsel.  Yet  it  was  a 
debt.  And  they  spoke  of  it  to  Barbara  as  one  that 
they  could  not  repay  —  yet  did  repay,  in  a  currency 
of  light,  which  they  did  not  seem  at  all  aware  of,  but 
which  brightened  up  his  room  for  him,  and  warmed 
his  heart  to  a  consciousness  of  priceless  riches,  while 
it  touched  Barbara  to  happy  tears.  It  illumined  even 
that  future  of  which  they  did  not  speak,  but  only 
waited  for,  in  thankfulness  that  it  was  to  be  at 
all.  There  were  premonitions  in  the  air;  in  the  lull 
and  silence,  a  sweet  expectancy:  the  thrill  of  some 
impending  change.  As  if  that  kindness  which  had 
stolen  in  upon  their  life  under  the  cover  of  bleak, 
wintry  days,  were  some  new  springtime,  in  which  the 
past,  sorrows  and  joys  alike,  would  soon  be  bursting 
into  flower,  against  the  fruitage  of  their  dreams.  In 
its  promise,  nothing  that  was  beautiful,  nothing  that 
was  kind,  seemed  strange.  It  seemed  but  natural 
that  the  Editor,  coming  himself  in  haste  when  the 
news  reached  him,  should  promise  Barbara  that 
Jerry  should  have  work  again.  And,  there  in  the 
shadows  of  the  hall  where  he  breathlessly  delivered 
his  eager  message,  and  in  that  dim  confusion  of  Bar- 
bara's relief  and  joy,  it  seemed  but  natural  that  he 
should  press  her  hands  in  his,  in  token  of  good  cheer. 


222   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

And  that,  in  token  of  that  nameless  bond  between 
them,  ere  he  hurried  back  into  the  heartless  world 
again,  both  standing  speechless,  he  should  touch  her 
forehead  with  his  lips. 

Ah,  yes!  It  was  too  early  yet  to  talk  of  failure! 
Jeremy  himself  could  see  it  now  —  now  that  Love  had, 
lighted  up  his  life  again. 


"You  forgot  us!"  she  said  reproachfully.  "Or, 
rather,  you  reckoned  us  —  me  and  the  other  Jeremy  — 
not  as  assets  at  all;  but  only  as  liabilities!" 

It  was  quite  true. 

"But  you  wouldn't  have  done  so,"  she  conceded, 
"if  you  only  could  have  seen  him!" 

That  also  was  quite  true.  Barbara's  eyes  convinced 
him  of  that;  for  they  were  always  seeing  "him," 
always  shining  at  something  in  the  air  that  to  Jeremy, 
as  yet,  was  little  more  than  a  cherub's  head  with 
wings,  hovering  above  Barbara's  transfiguration. 

"You  ought  to  see  his  eyes!" 

"You  ought  to  see  your  own!"  he  answered.  He 
began  to  understand  somewhat  those  ancient  pictures 
of  the  Madonna  and  her  Child.  Never  again  would 
they  seem  so  strange,  or  antiquated. 


223 

"And,  after  all,"  Barbara  reminded  him,  "bad  as 
it  is  to  lose  one's  foothold,  dear,  couldn't  you  imagine 
something  worse?" 

It  was  not  so  difficult.  On  the  contrary  it  was 
very  easy  to  imagine  something  worse  just  then, 
with  that  fond  new  sense  of  her  illumined  presence. 
What  it  had  meant  to  him,  what  he  had  missed  in 
its  absence,  what  it  had  restored  to  life  in  its  return 
—  all  that,  and  the  knowledge  that  such  things  vanish 
sometimes  like  a  dream,  and  become  as  those  other 
angels  that  he  could  only  trust,  but  never  see,  or  hear, 
or  hold  thus  humbly  in  his  arms  —  moved  him  to  a 
sense  of  shame  and  wonder,  at  his  forgetfulness. 

"Why,  suppose,"  she  told  him,  "that  that  one 
little  story  should  be  the  only  one;  you  would  still 
be  You!" 

Love's  old  sweet  argument. 

"And  you  would  still  have  Us!" 

Love's  old  appeal;  but  twice  as  brave,  twice  as  sure, 
as  it  had  used  to  be! 

"You  would  still  have  things  that  to  other  men 
are  only  rainbows!" 

It  was  all  unanswerable.  But,  for  all  her  cheer, 
the  old  wistfulness  would  come  back  into  his  face. 

"  But  /  see  rainbows." 


224  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

"And  I!"  she  answered.  "But  the  place  we  see 
them  from,  you  and  I,  is  so  lovely  in  itself!" 

This  was  the  truth  that  she  was  always  telling  him. 

"I  never  think  of  it  as  just  this  room  under  the 
eaves.  We  are  here,  yes  —  but  we  are  not  here.  It  is 
so  much  larger,  so  much  more  peaceful  and  beautiful, 
where  we  really  are!  Where  we  are  not  mere  folks, 
struggling " 

She  smiled  whimsically. 

" —  struggling  with  the  financials  and  the  physicals !  " 

She  pressed  his  hand. 

"You  know  what  I  mean.  I  mean  where  we  are 
not  mere  skimpy,  little,  achey,  worried  people,  skurry- 
ing  about  in  faded  clothes,  and  trying  to  hide  behind 
our  smiles  —  but  something  better,  something  nobler 
than  all  that!  That  is  one  side  —  the  shabby  side 
of  us.  And  it's  the  one  that  other  people  make  the 
most  of  —  unless  they  love  us.  And  it  is  funny  some- 
times; but  mostly  sad.  It  isn't  even  half  the  story 
—  is  it?" 

She  leaned  her  head  against  his  own. 

"They  don't  know  where  we  live,  dear,  do  they? 
.  .  .  Nor  what  we  see!  .  .  .  Nor  even  what  we  are!" 

In  the  silence,  which  he  would  not  break  —  it  was 
so  much  more  true  than  any  words  that  he  could  find 


WHERE  GARDENS  MEET         225 

to  utter  —  the  encircling  sense  of  that  fair,  inviolate 
seclusion  which  they  had  come  to  share,  and  knew 
they  shared;  its  shadowy  mysteries,  of  peace  in  the 
very  midst  of  strife,  of  light  in  darkness,  of  forms  and 
fragrances  that  would  never  fade,  save  in  some  passing 
blindness,  and  of  melodies  that  would  never  cease, 
though  drowned  sometimes  in  that  outer  din;  and  far 
beyond,  into  the  unknown  future,  those  long  per- 
spectives that  did  not  end  with  death  —  all  these  were 
speech  to  them.  Nor  is  life  ever  half  so  eloquent, 
half  so  sacred,  as  it  is  in  these  illumined  silences. 

in 

Little  by  little,  thus,  they  had  come  to  know  each 
other.  Word  by  word,  glance  by  glance,  mood  by 
mood,  silence  by  silence,  they  had  discovered  those 
secrets  of  each  other's  spiritual  history  and  romance, 
in  the  light  of  which  they  saw  each  other  now  as 
beings  not  merely  to  be  cherished,  but  to  be  far  more 
deeply  reverenced  and  pitied  than  they  had  dreamed. 
It  was  a  solemn  thought  to  her,  that  she  alone  knew 
him  for  what  he  was.  That,  whatever  he  might  seem 
to  others  upon  that  plane  of  life  where  he  would 
always  be  a  stranger,  it  was  given  to  her  alone  to 
see  him  in  this  nobler  realm  of  the  divine  romance: 


226  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

here  among  his  memories  and  his  aspirations,  his 
strivings  and  defeats  and  victories  —  all  those  daily 
tragedies  and  heroisms,  whose  scene  and  setting  are  a 
garden  hidden  from  the  world.  Here  he  was  a  figure 
whose  chivalry,  seemingly  so  futile,  and  so  obscure, 
touched  her  to  tears.  His  very  loneliness  was  enough 
for  that.  And  the  unblemished  honour  of  which 
sometimes  it  was  so  hard  for  him  to  keep  the  letter, 
in  the  makeshifts  of  a  losing  battle  with  that  other 
world;  and  the  patient  courage,  which  had  fainted  in 
the  stifling  atmosphere  of  hopes  deferred  —  love  must 
save  them!  It  must  drive  back  those  gathering 
shadows  in  his  eyes,  which  told  her  where  doubt  and 
fear  had  begun  already  to  shroud  the  light  of  his 
idealism.  Love  must  do  this.  For  only  love  has 
eyes  to  see,  or  heart  to  pity  and  adore,  or  hands  to 
save.  It  is  the  work  of  women  and  of  angels. 

"It  isn't  poverty,  or  obscurity,  that  I  fear,"  she 
told  him. 

"What  is  it  that  you  fear?" 

"  Ever  to  see  you  change  —  to  see  your  face  harden, 
and  its  light  go  out.  I  could  bear  anything  but 
that." 

There  was  no  answer  but  the  sudden  pressure  of  his 
hand. 


WHERE  GARDENS  MEET         227 

"And  it  isn't  only  of  ourselves  that  I  am  thinking," 
she  reminded  him. 

No  need  to  tell  him  that!  There,  always  now, 
was  that  other  Jeremy  hovering  above  their  tenderest 
confidences.  He  was  always  relevant;  and  from  one 
to  another  of  the  three  of  them,  their  thoughts  slipped 
easily,  swiftly,  without  a  break  —  to  and  fro,  like 
coloured  threads  in  a  design.  Love  was  weaver. 

And  it  was  strange,  but  at  the  mere  remembrance 
of  that  little  Helplessness,  Jeremy  was  strong  again  — 
all  his  old  courage  surging  back  into  his  stricken  life. 
Or,  rather,  it  was  a  new  courage  that  he  had  never 
known  before.  A  courage  that  had  nothing  to  do  with 
dreams,  their  failure  or  their  fulfillment.  Or,  rather, 
he  was  thinking  now,  not  of  his  own  dreams  any 
longer,  but  of  another's  that  were  yet  to  be;  and  that 
would  be  dimmed  or  brightened,  according  as  he  lost, 
or  kept,  the  light  youth  borrows  from  a  father's  eyes. 

Courage  for  another's  sake:  it  was  something  very 
different  from  courage  for  one's  self!  It  put  new 
ground  under  his  feet.  And  when  he  turned  and 
looked  —  behold !  he  stood  above  where  he  had  been 
before!  Higher,  safer,  freer  —  out  of  reach  of  hands 
that  before  had  dragged  him  down:  the  clutch  of  those 
deadly  fears  that  vanish  in  unselfishness! 


228  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

Here  was  a  higher  air  in  which  he  breathed  again, 
and  far  more  deeply,  far  more  calmly,  than  he  had 
ever  breathed  before.  In  which  he  saw  the  littleness 
of  things  that  had  been  big  to  him  —  and  the  ghostli- 
ness  of  things  that  had  been  solid  and  impenetrable 
barriers.  This,  it  came  to  him,  was  that  "service 
which  is  perfect  freedom."  Love  —  Love  was  the 
secret.  Love  first;  then,  lo!  —  Hope  and  Faith  were 
by  his  side. 

He  said  nothing,  but  the  vision  was  in  the  kindling 
of  his  face,  and  in  that  pressure  of  his  hand. 

And  Barbara  knew.  For  her  also  Love  was  the 
secret.  It  was  the  secret  of  her  tender  insight,  and  its 
discovery  of  those  fair  ideals  that  he  had  pondered 
in  his  heart,  that  he  had  kept  before  him  even  in  the 
dark  —  that  she  had  seen  even  through  the  veil  of 
his  poor  accomplishment. 

"They  don't  know  where  we  live!  Nor  what  we 
see!  Nor  even  what  we  are!" 

It  was  thus  that  she  had  spoken.  And  it  was  true. 
For  there  where  gardens  meet,  so  openly  that  they 
seem  to  mingle,  where  intervening  barriers  have  been 
obliterated  by  Love's  concessional  or  overgrown  by 
its  concealing  grace,  so  that  they  who  dwell  in  kindred 
and  adjoining  mysteries  may  walk  together  the  same 


WHERE  GARDENS  MEET         229 

embowered  paths,  gazing  upon  the  self-same  vistas, 
listening  to  the  same  far  melodies,  breathing  the  same 
sweet  freedom  of  an  eternal  air  —  they,  they  only, 
know  what  Love  may  be,  even  upon  earth.  It  is  the 
love  to  which  the  angels  minister  —  that  higher  joy 
which  man  seeks  in  vain  upon  the  lower  levels  of  the 
sense,  however  passing  sweet.  And  those  who  know 
it  need  not  mind  how  small  Space  is  for  them:  they 
know  no  bounds.  Nor  how  Time  flees:  for  there  its 
touch  has  lost  all  power  to  destroy.  The  terrible 
phantom  with  the  glass  and  scythe  is  seen  to  be  noth- 
ing but  a  mild  old  under-gardener  of  immortal 
loveliness. 


XII 
THE  VALE  OF  SILENCE 

IT  WAS  thus  that  Jeremy  found  himself,  one  day, 
an    Assistant  Real-estate  Editor  —  he  to  whom 
the  solid  earth  was  so  unsubstantial,  and  whose 
pen,  tracing  henceforth  the  record  of  Sites  and  Sales, 
Values  and  Permits  and  Sub-divisions,  moved  vaguely 
in  a  trance,  writing  in  a  foreign  language  of  things 
that  were  not  in  the  beginning,  were  not  now,  nor 
ever  would  be,  real  to  him. 

Whose  dream  it  was  that  was  being  realized,  he 
never  could  make  out.  Doubtless  there  were  men 
who  had  seen  such  visions;  doubtless,  they,  too,  were 
realizing  unrealities.  It  was  a  strange  sensation  to 
know  that  he  was  sitting  at  another  man's  desk;  and 
that,  somewhere,  some  one  else  was  sitting  at  his  own! 
—  by  right  of  dreams.  For  here,  beyond  a  doubt, 
he  was  —  or  seemed  to  be:  he  sometimes  questioned 
it  at  first  —  in  a  new  corner  of  the  old  office  where  he 
had  failed  so  miserably  as  himself,  succeeding  as 
230 


THE  VALE  OF  SILENCE          231 

another!  At  least  not  failing  any  more  —  how,  or 
why,  he  could  not  say.  For  all  day  long  he  wrote  the 
merest  fairy  tales!  Or  moved,  spellbound,  in  unheard- 
of  places,  asking  strange,  idle  questions,  and  listening 
to  answers  that  did  not  matter  —  jotting  them  down 
upon  innocent  white  sheets  of  paper  that  were  not 
more  helpless  than  himself! 

That  day  when  he  brought  the  news  home  to  Bar- 
bara, they  sat  and  gazed  at  each  other,  until  her  mind 
could  be  born  anew. 

"A  Real-estate  Editor!" 

Echo:  "Real-estate  Editor!" 

"A  Real " 

She  burst  out  laughing. 

"But    .    .    .     but  why?" 

Echo:  "Why?" 

Why,  indeed?  All  he  could  tell  was,  that  he  had 
been  ill  in  the  very  nick  of  time  to  get  well  again  in 
the  one  week,  of  all  the  weeks  in  history,  when  another 
young  man  rose  from  his  desk  in  wrath  and  renounced 
Real  Estate  forever.  And  Jeremy,  it  seems,  arriving 
at  the  office  of  his  friend  the  editor  half  an  hour  late, 
by  reason  of  a  broken  shoestring 

That  was  why. 

It  was  the  shoestring.     Barbara  always  declared 


232   THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

it  was  the  shoestring.  For  Jeremy,  entering  when  he 
did,  in  the  very  midst  of  the  dilemma,  found  himself 
acclaimed,  and  was  consecrated  on  the  spot,  the  Very 
Man!  —  the  one  young,  promising,  assistant-looking 
person  available  in  all  the  universe  that  hour,  to  step 
into  the  breach. 

"  But  you  don't  know  anything  about  Real  Estate," 
Barbara  reminded  him. 

"That's  what  I  told  them.  They  said  it  didn't 
matter.  What  they  needed  was  a  man." 

"But,  Jerry  dear  .  .  .  well,  after  all,  we 
should  be  thankful." 

Jeremy  sighed. 

"Oh,  doubtless  I  shall  make  a  hit,"  he  mused. 

"Why?"  she  asked.  It  was  not  Jeremy  who  had 
spoken  so.  It  was  the  Assistant  Real-estate  Editor. 
"Why,"  she  insisted,  "do  you  say  that?" 

"Because,"  he  answered,  "I  never  dreamed  of  it. 
And  will  never " 

He  gazed  thoughtfully  out  of  the  window. 

" — never  care!" 

ii 

It  was  something  to  be  thankful  for,  indeed  — 
every  Saturday,  just  at  noon,  when,  in  a  brown  paper 


THE  VALE  OF  SILENCE          233 

envelope  thrust  out  at  him  through  a  grated  window, 
he  drew  the  wages  of  amazement. 

For  Jeremy  it  was  the  beginning  of  that  vale  of 
silence  in  which  men  gaze  at  one  another,  pondering 
in  their  hearts  whither  they  are  going  in  such  strange 
fashion  of  a  dream ;  whether  it  be  chance,  or  providence, 
that  has  brought  them  where  they  find  themselves, 
in  unsought  ways;  or  some  missing  of  the  road,  per- 
haps, for  which  they  are  themselves  to  blame.  Jeremy 
Ladd  and  J .  Lad,  the  Assistant  Real-estate  Editor  — 
it  was  J.  Lad  on  the  brown  paper  envelopes  —  argued 
between  themselves  what  the  philosophy  of  round 
pegs  in  square  holes  might  be,  and  the  inscrutable 
purpose  of  discrepancies.  To  be  paid  by  that  cunning 
old  Shylock  of  a  world  for  the  little  that  one  knew, 
while  the  much  was  so  utterly  unmarketable  —  "  I 
don't  see  why!"  as  Barbara  used  to  say.  Neither  did 
Jeremy.  But  doubtless  they  would  see,  some  day. 
And  meanwhile 

Always  meanwhile!  Life's  password!  —  Life  itself 
had  whispered  it  to  them  at  last.  The  open  sesame 
to  all  those  joys  and  wonders  that  are  not  a  dream,  to 
be  missed,  or  waited  for;  or,  if  a  dream,  one  that  is  so 
safe,  and  sure.  He  had  but  to  look  at  Barbara  and 
the  Other  Jeremy,  or  even  but  to  think  of  them,  to 


234  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

know  that  they  were  far  more  relevant  than  any  of 
those  riddles  with  which  men  scatter  the  few  wits 
they  have.  And  it  was  strange,  but  the  sweetness  of 
life  lay  largely  in  those  kindly  ironies  by  which  its 
burdens  and  rebuffs  turned  out  to  be  its  blessings  and 
caresses.  Love,  always,  was  the  transforming  magic. 
He  had  noticed  that.  Love,  doubtless  —  somehow  — 
was  behind  it  all. 

Even  now,  behind  that  grim,  sardonic  mask  of  fate, 
it  might  be  smiling  at  him! 

So  he  smiled  back. 

And,  instantly,  the  air  cleared! 

The  mask  vanished! 

In  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  in  faith  again  —  always 
in  faith,  but  now  not  merely  in  its  high-strung  gallantry, 
but  as  well  in  that  divine  good  humour  which  is 
reckoned  commonly  a  mere  human  thing  —  the  old, 
old  spirit  of  romance  came  back  into  his  heart  — 
singing! 

in 

He  did,  I  believe,  some  very  pretty  writing  now. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  Real  Estate  ever  had  its  due 
before,  in  the  columns  of  the  daily  press.  For  the 
more  he  looked  at  it,  the  more  he  discovered  that 
behind  it  all  —  always  behind  it  all,  in  this  illusive 


THE  VALE  OF  SILENCE          235 

life  of  ours  —  behind  the  Facts,  there  was  now  and 
then  a  beautiful  Idea  discernible.  At  the  very  least, 
a  background  that  lent  itself  to  something  that  was 
almost  poetry:  of  phrase,  or  chronicle.  Mists  of  fog 
er  smoke  softened  the  outlines  of  the  newest  buildings 
as  they  rose  like  towers  of  Babel  into  the  upper  air. 
So  also  there  was  the  eternal  glamour  of  adventure  in 
their  enterprise.  And  sometimes  antique  memories 
among  their  modern  hopes.  Many  a  loving  moment 
Jeremy  spent  over  the  precious  record  of  a  mullioned 
window,  or  a  cloistered  passageway.  It  was  the  old 
brickyard  life  all  over  again!  That  old,  old  making- 
the-most  of  meagreness  —  the  frugal  treasuring  of  the 
occasional,  of  fleeting  echo  and  transient  gleam;  with 
now  and  then  a  wistful  glance,  over  the  weigh-bills  and 
across  those  waters  of  separation,  into  a  magic  and  il- 
limitable distance  of  the  withheld  and  the  unattained. 

They  were  happy  days.  For  in  this  quiet  smiling 
in  life's  face,  the  spirits  of  evil  that  are  abroad  no  less 
than  angels  —  seeing  him  so  sweetly-humoured,  I 
suppose,  so  reasonable  withal,  their  best-aimed  arrows 
glancing  from  that  magic  shield  of  faith  —  left  him  to 
his  humble  peace. 

And  who  could  say  —  it  was  still  so  early,  fortune 
so  mysterious,  realizations  sometimes  so  hard  to 


236  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

recognize  at  first  —  what  might  not  yet  come  true, 
even  of  those  baffled  dreams?  Not  that  it  mattered 
now,  so  much;  but  there  were  shoestrings  yet  that 
might  be  broken  in  the  nick  of  time!  Life  stretched 
away,  years  and  years.  Later,  sometime,  when  it  was 
a  little  less  insistent,  they  would  go  out  into  the 
country  —  Toodlumshire,  perhaps  —  and  settle  down 
with  a  garden  and  a  flock  of  chickens;  and  in  the  peace 
of  all  those  quiet  vistas  that  come  to  man  by  old  red- 
apple  trees  and  cottage  fires,  he  would  write.  .  .  . 
Not  what  he  must  write,  then.  Only  what  he  would! 

Surely,  in  years  and  years,  one  might  realize  a  dream 
like  that. 

So  small  a  dream  —  the  merest  remnant.  A  last 
fond  cottage,  as  it  were,  in  Spain,  with  this  ancient 
motto  above  its  hearth: 

While  I  was  musing,  the  fire  burned 

He  had  chosen  it  himself.  It  seemed  to  him  so 
much  like  Life,  he  said.  To  the  rest  of  us,  it  seemed 
so  much  —  so  very  much  — !  like  Jeremy. 

IV 

It  was  the  very  littleness  of  the  asking  that  made 
it  so  hard  for  him  to  understand.  To  be  denied  so 


THE  VALE  OF  SILENCE          237 

slight  a  boon!  To  find  it  twilight  ere  the  day,  seem- 
ingly, had  but  well  begun!  Shadow  by  shadow,  year 
by  year,  in  the  appointed  fashion  of  man's  lot,  he 
would  have  grown  accustomed  to  the  darkness;  even 
have  welcomed  it,  as  time  for  sleep. 

But  to  have  it  descend  so  swiftly,  out  of  the  noon- 
day sky!    And  with  that  old,  old  foolishness  of  life 

—  that  old  confusion  and   bewilderment.    Nothing 
where  one  looked  for  it,  nothing  when  one  wished  for  it, 
nothing  when  one  needed  it  —  not  even  time,  when 
one  had  learned  to  wait !    No  unity,  no  plot,  no  rhyme, 
nor  reason,  nor  even  decency  and  order.    Ebb  and 
flow  without  a  calendar.    Entrance  and  exit  without 
a  cue.    And  now,  in  the  very  midst  of  folly,  a  crisis  so 
preposterous!    A  summons  from  the  King  Himself 

—  all  unannounced  by  any  herald  voice  or  trumpeting, 
all  unattended  by  any  fitting  pomp  or  pageantry! 
And  ibis  —  this  breaking  of  some  merest  shoestring 

—  was  the  end  of  knighthood  and  the  divine  romance! 
Jeremy  said  nothing,  but  his  smile  vanished  and 

his  face  blanched. 

And  nothing  mattered  any  more. 

To  those  who  saw  him  it  was  plain  that  the  end 
had  come  indeed.    The  last  chapter  of  a  strange 


238  THE  LEGEND  OF  JERRY  LADD 

story  —  and  no  one  could  say  just  what  he  thought  of 
it,  nor  whether  it  had  been  worth  the  reading,  nor 
even  what  it  meant.  Only  that  it  was  true,  and 
left  one  dumb  and  wondering,  like  one's  own  strange 
story. 

Barbara  herself  was  silent  now.  To  her  alone  he 
ever  spoke  again,  turning  his  head  one  day,  a  little,  to 
say  faintly: 

"I  was  just  .  .  .  beginning  ...  to  learn 
how  to  live." 

And  even  Love  could  find  no  answer  but  its  tears  to 
that. 

But  —  just  at  the  last,  while  she  was  watching  — 
suddenly,  in  the  flash  of  an  instant,  his  pale  face 
shone  again,  and  all  his  visions  came  back  into  his 
wondering  eyes! 


THE  END 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GAXDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


'minium  inn  mil  inn  mi  mi 

°8  442     1 


:  nunew  ROOMM  uanvn  FMCUI 


A     000128442     1 


